Assuming that Warren Buffett knows a thing or two about successful investment strategies, one can easily surmise that the best place to invest is where other investors are taking money from. Although finding data on cash inflows and outflows is no easy task, finding underperforming areas is much easier than most people think. After all, when money is leaving a sector, the securities that make up that group will tend to underperform and punish investors with negative returns. These same "unpopular" securities almost always, eventually, become tomorrow's top performers.

With the above in mind, it makes sense that most long-term investors would want to find and invest in those unpopular assets. But to find those assets or securities, one needs to know which sectors are the worst performers "today." So assuming that we want to invest this way, here is the easiest technique you can use to find those unpopular asset groups.

1. Go to Morningstar. This comprehensive website provides a tremendous amount of valuable information to every type of investor. However, what the "unpopular" investor is most interested in is categories that underperform because these same categories will probably become the future's "best" performing class.

2. Go to the Funds tab. Although an investor might be a stock, bond, or even options investor, the Mutual Funds tab provides extremely detailed information on category performance and track records. This is vital in the initial stages of finding the "best" place to invest.

3. Scroll down to Mutual Fund Performance and Ratings and click on the Category Returns box. This will bring you to another page which sorts category performance from highest to lowest on a YTD basis. By clicking on other time periods, you can sort for 1 month, 1 year, 3 year and 5 year periods.

4. Find the category that best suits your investment requirements (e.g. Domestic equities, Municipal bonds, etc.) and find the worst performing category. Use this as a starting point.

5. Click on the category that suits your needs. The next page will sort the underlying funds from best performer to worst performer. Study several funds, paying close attention to their top 25 holdings. After viewing a few funds, several trends will arise in that many securities exist in the top holdings from one fund to the next.

Since the Holdings will also provide a security's specific contribution to the fund's overall performance, it is easy to identify the poorest performing securities. After short-listing several, investors can then move into their analysis stage to determine which specific securities are most likely to provide that long-term profitability to their portfolio.