Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Utilities And Health Care: This Year's Odd Couple

Quick name the two best performing sectors YTD in the MSCI World...

Is it surprising that the top of leader boards reads in bright green Utilities (5.24%) and Health Care (5.07%)? Third place goes to Materials which is trailing by a significant margin (1.49%).  These two sectors have something in commmon other than being generally more defensive in nature. They currently have the two best 3-month change in estimates of any sector. Health Care has the highest 4-year average sales growth estimate change over the past three months (0.4). 7 of the 10 sectors have had negative sales growth revisions over this span. For Utilities, they are the best of the worst when it comes to change in EPS growth estimates. They have seen their four-year average growth estimates fall by -0.3% over the the past three months while the average sector is at -1.6%.

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