ANOTHER good sign.
Defensive Stocks Lose for First Time Since 1999
By Matt Walcoff - Feb 8, 2012 8:53 PM ET .
As global stocks return to a bull market, the losers in the U.S. are companies least tied to economic growth.
For the first time since 1999, Standard & Poor’s 500 Index utilities, phone companies and providers of consumer staples posted the only monthly losses, slumping at least 1.5 percent with dividends in January, and continued to lag behind this month. It’s a reversal from 2011, when the three defensive industries returned more than 6.3 percent as investors embraced stocks thought to do well during a slowdown.
Investors are shifting toward riskier assets as U.S. manufacturing expanded the most since June and the jobless rate fell to a three-year low of 8.3 percent. The MSCI All-Country World Index has risen 20 percent from its October low, meeting the definition of a bull market, while the dollar has weakened against 15 of its 16 major counterparts. In 2011, the global equity measure suffered its biggest losses since the subprime- mortgage crisis.
“Last year, investors tended to hide in things which are stable, paying reasonable dividends,” said Sudhir Nanda, a money manager and head of the quantitative equity group at T. Rowe Price Group Inc. in Baltimore, which oversees $489.5 billion.
“This year, people looked at the U.S. and said, ‘Things are not really that bad.’ If the economy is humming, people tend to buy more of the sectors which will profit from growth, industrials, materials and things like that.”
more @ Bloomberg.com
DO SOMETHING!
| 