Strongest Market Sectors Since 1933: Smoking Wins, Steel Rusts Away
Summary A new review sorts the performance of 30 sectors over the past 82 years. So-called ‘sin stocks’ such as tobacco and beer run away with the best returns. Cyclical sectors and basic materials tended to fare poorest. The article specifically considers the implications of these data for DG investors. Philosophical Economics, one of my must-read financial blogs, recently put up a fascinating post showing the returns of the US market by industry with dividends reinvested since 1933. If you’re wondering about the methodology used to create the results, check the linked post, it’s too complicated to explain here briefly. The winning sectors showed a truly shocking degree of outperformance. The #2 performing sector, beer turned $1,000 in 1933 into $26 million today! By contrast, the worst sector, steel, turned that same $1,000 into just $57,000 today. $57,000 isn’t bad, but over an 82 year investment period, it certainly isn’t great. $57,000 pales in comparison to $26 million for sure. Here’s some key takeaways for dividend growth investors. The Worst Investment Sin? Socially Responsible Investing For long-term investors, the message is clear, you need to own the so-called sin stocks. Hold your nose and donate profits to charity if you must, but these stocks can’t be passed up if you want market-beating performance. The top 3 sectors over the past 82 years were cigarettes at 8.34% real annualized return, beer at 7.51%, and oil at 6.84%. Investors in “ethical” funds that avoid these sectors are virtually guaranteeing drastic underperformance. I heard recently, and I’d love to attribute it but I can’t remember the source, that socially responsible investing suffers from two primary flaws. That is, by choosing not to invest in these sorts of companies, you’re actually rewarding both the sinful investors and giving the sinful companies an easier ride. Stock prices, on a day to day basis are set by supply and demand. If you convince a large portion of the investing public not to back an alcohol, tobacco, or oil company, for example, you lower that company’s share price. Since the share price is artificially lowered due to lessened demand, shares will return higher than otherwise anticipated returns. Companies that regularly buy-back shares perform particularly well if their shares remain artifically depressed for long periods of time. Thus ‘sinful’ investors, along with the ‘sinful’ managers of these companies see their investments become more profitable thanks to the socially conscious investor. Management in particular earns fat performance bonuses for their superior stock returns. In short, you’re depriving yourself of investing profits so people that aren’t as morally upstanding as you can earn more money. What good does that accomplish? Perhaps more problematically, by not owning companies, you lose the ability to influence them. If you own an oil company and its operations destroy a water supply and poison the local population you and other ethical investors can raise hell and force them to change their ways. If only morally oblivious people own oil companies, there will be no reaction and the company can continue in its unethical behaviors. Mining companies, for example, engage in ethically questionable behavior and only rarely get called on it because their shareholder bases don’t tend to complain about bad practices. By contrast, a Nike (NYSE: NKE ) for example, if it tries to mistreat its employees hears no end of it from upset shareholders. Finally, it should be noted that most of the sin stocks don’t need fresh capital frequently, if ever. How often does Altria (NYSE: MO ) or Diageo (NYSE: DEO ) need to offer new stock to the market? By not buying their shares, you aren’t even depriving the company of capital – you’re only depressing the after-market value of shares already issued. To actually harm these companies, you’d have to be able to block them from getting the capital necessary to expand their operations. Not buying the shares of companies that generate sufficient free cash flow to buy small nations; you aren’t really going to set them back too much. Other Top Performing Sectors Of The Past 82 Years The #4 returning sector, electrical equipment (6.61%) is a bit surprising, at least to me. For people thinking about Emerson Electric (NYSE: EMR ), it’s an encouraging result. I’d guess this segment of the market is probably significantly underweighted in most of our DGI portfolios. Mainstays of many folks DGI portfolios, #5 food and #6 healthcare come in nicely, though they trail the sin stocks dramatically. While necessary for life, these products simply don’t have the addictive function that drives the returns of the very top performing stocks. Still, they’re key sectors we should all own in large quantities. The 7th top performing sector, paper and business supplies is a real head-scratcher. And returns have been very steady over the past 8 decades, it’s not like this one got a fast start and trailed off recently. I’m not sure how to incorporate this into my DGI portfolio. Ideas anyone? Next up, retail at #8 isn’t too surprising. Though for the DG investor be careful, these names tend to come and go. I don’t like Target (NYSE: TGT ) and seems I’m one of the view that likes even Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT ) anymore. Next up is a classic picks and shovels example. Transportation vehicles (ships, aircraft, railcars) came in at 9th, while transportation (the operation of said vehicles) was 26th, among the worst five industries. It’s frequently better to supply the tools to run a business rather than to be the actual operator, and transportation is one of those categories. Boeing (NYSE: BA ) is a great business. The airlines? Not so much. Rounding out the top 10 would be chemicals, an indispensable though under-the-radar segment of the modern economy. Middle of the Pack Sectors Coming up in the middle third are quite a few of the DGI mainstays. Doing less well than you might expect, for example, would be consumer goods which come in at only #14. Utilities (#15), and Telecom (#17) rank in the middle of the 30 sector pack, showing you’re giving up a good deal of total return for that high yield. If I’d had to guess, I would have thought telecom would beat utilities though, I’m honestly impressed that utilities came in the dead middle of the 30 sector spread despite being very low growth names. Restaurants and hotels came in 12th, but that almost comes with an asterisk, as a great deal of the performance came from 2005 onward. This sector has lagged for long periods of time – between 1992 and 2005 for example, you lost half your money in this sector and that includes reinvested dividends. Compared to the steady gains most of these top sectors made over the decades, this one stands out as a real dud despite the reasonable overall ranking. Financials came in at 16th, but they were in the top 6 until 2008, when the US financial system rudely decided to self-immolate. The lesson I’d take from this is that financials are a must-own sector, but you should avoid the wild west gamblers’ market that is large US banks. The US weighs in poorly, with the world’s 49th soundest banking system. The lesson here seems clear: Buy sound banks in foreign countries that don’t lever their balance sheet to massive degrees and bet heavily on opaque instruments. The Worst Sectors: Tread Carefully The worst sectors tend to either involve basic materials or be highly cyclical. And that makes sense, to compound money effectively over an eight decade span, you need to avoid wiping out your equity too frequently, as these sectors are prone to do. The very worst sectors were steel and textiles, both of which were effectively terminated by foreign competition. Offshoring and globalization essentially destroyed these industries inside the US’ borders. As DG investors, we must be aware of changing global trends that threaten to not just destroy an individual company but potentially a whole industry. #25 Printing and Publishing is another one that has suffered greatly with recent changes to the entire industry’s dynamic. A dividend investor buying a newspaper stock like Gannett (NYSE: GCI ) 15 years ago would likely never have imagined what would happen in the coming years. Mining at #21 and coal at #23 also fair poorly being cyclical industries. Autos and trucks at #22 also came in with weak results. I’m always amazed at the number of DGIs that own stocks like General Motors (NYSE: GM ) that I wouldn’t buy in a million years. But we all have our weaknesses, I own Barrick (NYSE: ABX ) in the equally pitiable mining sector. My personal lowest-ranked holding comes in the 27th ranked sector of the 30, construction. I’m frankly shocked, given just how much stuff the world has built over the last 80 years how badly this segment has done. I know construction is hyper-cyclical, but businesses like Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT ), which I own, seem to be strong and have a decent moat. Takeaways For me, I only have a few companies in the bottom performing sectors, namely Caterpillar and Barrick mentioned above. From the top 5, I lack electrical equipment and smoking. I want to buy a tobacco stock but I haven’t seen any near what I’d judge to be a fair value, unlike in alcohol, where a stock like Diageo screams “buy me” every time I look at its long-term fundamentals. And for electrical equipment, I’d never viewed this to be a must-own sort of asset. Consider me interested now. My top weighted sector is financials which only scored 16th. Though noted above, this was a top 6 segment until 2008, and the financials I own all grew earnings and raised dividends during the 2008-09 stretch. Since I avoid US financials, I think I get a pass here – banking is still a must-own area. For investors heavily overweighted in popular sectors outside the top 10, say, consumer goods, telecoms, and utilities, think about some potential reallocation. Those segments are all very popular with DGIs, and with good reason, they offer nice yields and defensive stock performance. However, moving more of your money into higher performing areas such as tobacco, oil, liquor, and food might boost your returns without taking more risk. Here’s the full 30 in a table and the link again if you want to see the original post where you can see charts of each industry over the decades.