Over the last 20 days, as stock markets around the world have recovered from their January sell-offs, an interesting thing has happened. Defensive stocks are leading the rebound. As an example, in the MSCI World Europe index, the utility sector is the best performer, up 7.57% on average.
MSCI Europe Sector Performance
The move has been a pretty powerful one too, as measured by the following stats:
1) Over 100% of the 21 European utilities are above their 20 day moving average
2) 71% are making new 20 day highs
3) 100% of the companies have realized positive performance over the last 20 days
4) 65% of all trading days have been up days for the sector