Gavekal Capital: The Median Stock Is Unchanged Over The Last Year But Sector Allocation Makes A Difference

Friday, January 16, 2015

The Median Stock Is Unchanged Over The Last Year But Sector Allocation Makes A Difference

As we noted yesterday, the US stock market has been the only game in town recently. The S&P 500 is up about 8% over the year and the median stock in the MSCI North America is up 7%. Meanwhile the median stock in the MSCI World Index has not changed over the past year.

However, breaking the MSCI World into sectors we see that performance has been pretty uneven over the past year. Energy, unsurprisingly, has vastly underperformed. The median energy stock is firmly in a bear market down over 28% over the past year. On the other end of the performance spectrum, readers of this blog will not be surprised to see that the median stock in the health care sector is higher by 17% over the past year.

Median performance for the remaining sectors separates fairly cleanly among couter-cyclicals and cyclicals. The median stock in the utilities sector is 14% higher than it was a year ago. And the median stock in the consumer staples sector is up 9%. Telecom is up 1%.

Tech is the only sector where the median stock higher over the past year (5%, respectively). The median stock in the consumer discretionary sector is unchanged. The remaining cyclical sectors are all down between 2% and 7% over the past year.

About Gavekal Capital

Gavekal Capital is a US registered investment advisory firm that manages the Gavekal Knowledge Leaders Strategy. Knowledge Leaders are a group of the world’s leading innovators with deep reservoirs of intangible capital. These companies often possess competitive advantages such as strong brand, proprietary knowledge or a unique distribution mechanism. Knowledge Leaders are largely service-based and advanced manufacturing businesses, often operating globally. Gavekal Capital seeks to identify the world’s leading knowledge companies through a proprietary process that analyzes corporate knowledge investments.
We offer the Gavekal Knowledge Leaders Strategy in multiple products for global investors. For more information about our product offerings please visit http://www.gavekalcapital.com.
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Disclosure

The information presented here is for informational purposes only, and this document is not to be construed as an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, securities. Some investments are not suitable for all investors, and there can be no assurance that any investment strategy will be successful. An investor cannot invest directly in an index. Hyperlinks may be included in this message that provide direct access to other internet resources, including web sites. While we believe these links are to reliable sources, Gavekal has no control over the accuracy or content of information contained on these sites. Although we make every effort to ensure such links are accurate, up to date and relevant, we have no control over pages maintained by external providers. The views expressed by these external providers on their own web pages or on external sites they link to are not necessarily those of Gavekal.
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