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Consumer Staples

Mar 07 2023

Rate-Sensitive Groups Dominate Unattractive List

  • Mar 7, 2023

Utilities, Real Estate, and Consumer Staples are the bottom three sectors among the GS Scores. 

Jun 22 2018

Altitudes Are Too High— And Attitudes Are Getting There

  • Jun 22, 2018

An important feature of this bull market—and a reason for its longevity—is the slow recovery in investor attitudes relative to valuation altitudes...

May 11 2018

Attention Shoppers: Contrarian Plays In Aisle 3

  • May 11, 2018

The 2017 run that pushed the nine-year bull market to all-time highs made it very difficult to find anything that looked cheap, and few choices that looked average. Even the Tech bubble of 1999 allowed investors to find moderately priced stocks among the mundane old-economy companies...

May 05 2018

Staples Still Stomped Upon

  • May 5, 2018

Consumer Staples has historically been the sector most resistant to intermediate stock market corrections, exhibiting an average “downside capture” of less than 40% during all such declines dating back to 1989.

Mar 07 2018

What’s Ailing Consumer Staples?

  • Mar 7, 2018

For the first time in this bull market, defensive stocks failed to provide any semblance of defense during a market correction.

Mar 02 2018

What’s Ailing The Staples?

  • Mar 2, 2018

The setback that began in late January qualifies as the sixth intermediate correction of the current bull market, where “intermediate” is defined as an S&P 500 loss ranging between 7%-12%...

Jan 06 2018

Keep An Eye On “Relative” Inflation

  • Jan 6, 2018

While our Group Selection (GS) framework hasn’t yet warmed up to commodity-oriented industries, our macro work suggests perhaps it should.

Oct 06 2017

Thoughts On Sentiment

  • Oct 6, 2017

The MTI’s Attitudinal category has held stable over the last several months, an impressive (and contrarily bullish) feat considering the steady onslaught of new bull market highs.

May 05 2017

Still In Thrall With Low Vol

  • May 5, 2017

Ongoing investor obsession with stability strikes us as considerably more dangerous than the situation in the Tech sector. While many see market parallels with 1999, we instead see a mirror image.

Mar 08 2016

Is Defense Overpriced?

  • Mar 8, 2016

Relative valuations of Staples and Utilities sectors already reflect a “flight to quality” effect. Investors looking to add some economic/stock market defense should focus on the cheaper Health Care groups.

Jan 08 2016

Two Worrisome Bull Market Highs

  • Jan 8, 2016

Among the dozens of indexes we monitor, the year’s final all-time highs (S&P 500 Consumer Staples and S&P 500 Low Volatility Index on December 29th) can’t possibly provide any comfort to stock market bulls.

Apr 08 2014

Late March Reversal… And The First Shall Be Last

  • Apr 8, 2014

We examine the impact of March’s strong group leadership reversal on the top and bottom of our group model.

Apr 07 2014

Profit Margins At The Sector Level

  • Apr 7, 2014

All ten of the S&P 500 sectors recorded a sequential increase in four-quarter trailing net profit margins. But consider where sector margins stand today relative to their 25-year medians. Eight of ten S&P 500 sectors are recording profit margins well above their long-term medians.

Oct 08 2013

Group Models: Info Tech Tops Domestic, Financials Remain Atop Global

  • Oct 8, 2013

Both models have numerous Information Technology and Financials groups in Attractive territory. Neither model has any Unattractive Tech groups. Alternatively, neither model has any Attractive Utilities groups, while several Utilities rate Unattractive in each.

Sep 10 2013

Group Models: Info Tech Tops Domestic, Financials Tops Global

  • Sep 10, 2013

Both models (particularly domestic) have a number of Attractive rated Information Technology groups and no Unattractive rated Tech groups. Financials’ domination of the Global Attractive range continues.

Sep 10 2013

Sector Margins: Just Thank The Consumer

  • Sep 10, 2013

We’ve noted before that profit margin gains since the technology boom have been primarily a Large Cap phenomenon.

Aug 07 2013

A Comprehensive Look At The Emerging Markets: Diagnosis And Prognosis

  • Aug 7, 2013

We examine Emerging Markets from both the top-down and bottom-up perspectives as we try to identify where to move and what to expect. We check in on two successful EM thematic group ideas as well.

Aug 06 2013

Group Models Agree On Energy & Materials

  • Aug 6, 2013

But Information Technology rises to the top of the Domestic model, while the trend of Financials domination in the Global model remains intact.

Jul 12 2013

Domestic and Global Group Models: Strong Agreement On Financials

  • Jul 12, 2013

Our Domestic Scores have five Financials groups rating Attractive; these same five industry groups are Attractive in our Global model. In total, seven Financials groups rank Attractive in the Global model, with insurance groups looking particularly Attractive.

Jul 09 2013

A Contrarian Call For The Second Half

  • Jul 9, 2013

With the notable exception of the Consumer Discretionary sector, cyclical stocks topped out globally on a relative basis in early 2011 (Chart 3). Throughout the last two and one half years, there have been repeated calls for industrial cyclicals—which were, of course, the leaders of the last cyclical bull market—to reassume stock market leadership.

May 13 2013

Domestic and Global Group Models: Strong Differences On Consumer Staples

  • May 13, 2013

Consumer Staples are top-ranked in the domestic model but appear particularly Unattractive in the global model, which continues to be dominated by the Financials.

May 01 2013

Leadership: More Of The Same?

  • May 1, 2013

Market valuations and investor sentiment are a bit too inflated for our comfort, but the catalyst of the MTI’s drop to Neutral status two weeks ago was simply the action of the stock market itself. Specifically, we haven’t liked the disjointed nature of U.S. market action since about mid-March, where high-yielding and economically-defensive stocks have done the heavy lifting in the Dow and S&P 500 moves to all-time highs. This isn’t so much a change in leadership as an acceleration of an existing trend, and it’s now pronounced enough to weigh down a few of our technical measures.

Dec 06 2011

Nice Gains… But In The Wrong Groups

  • Dec 6, 2011

Sure looks like a bear market rally rather than start of new bull market. Many global indexes still down 20% or more from peak levels.

 

Mar 04 2011

The Consumer Is Reviving… But Sell The Stocks

  • Mar 4, 2011

The game is now over for Discretionary, and this opinion is supported by the sector’s decline to the bottom of our GS Score ten-sector composite.

 

Oct 05 2010

Thoughts On Asia Investing: Performance & Valuation of Consumer Stocks

  • Oct 5, 2010

A look at Asian valuations show China to be fairly valued (neither overvalued nor undervalued), but there are other attractive (cheap) ways to play consumer stocks in Asia.

 

Apr 05 2008

Consumer Goods Stocks Versus Commodity Stocks: Identifying Long-Term Leadership

  • Apr 5, 2008

Are we asking the wrong question about Consumer Stocks versus Staples? This month’s “Of Special Interest” looks at the relationship between all Consumer groups (both Discretionary and Staples) compared to Commodity related groups.

 

Feb 05 2006

Digging Into Consumer Groups

  • Feb 5, 2006

An analysis of underlying factors that may be hindering the consumer groups, both “discretionary” and “staples,” from making a showing in our Attractive rankings.