Defensive Stocks Only A Partial Sanctuary (KO, BUD, KFT, MCD, MO, PG, CL, MRK, JNJ)
Defensive stocks are often the stocks that investors try to use as a safe harbor to wait out the storms. We have covered many of these and even gave our own list of defensive names with a value strategy earlier…
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Defensive stocks are often the stocks that investors try to use as a safe harbor to wait out the storms. We have covered many of these and even gave our own list of defensive names with a value strategy earlier this year for the first half of 2008. But today we are focusing on the actual leaders in "defensive go-to stocks".
These go-to names are Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD), Kraft (NYSE: KFT), McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD), Altria (NYSE: MO), Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), Colgate Polmolive (NYSE: CL), Merck (NYSE: MRK), and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ).
These are not all of the defensive names at all, but these are the major stocks that investors have flocked to in defensive stock trading strategies in recent months:
STOCK LAST CHANGE
KO $59.28 +$0.26; +0.44%
BUD $46.57 -$0.40; -0.85%
KFT $30.87 -$0.33; -1.06%
MCD $52.81 -$0.35; -0.66%
MO $73.23 +$0.21; +0.29%
PG $65.64 -$0.71; -1.07%
CL $76.35 -$0.49; -0.64%
MRK $43.59 -$0.47; -1.07%
JNJ $62.43 +$0.20; +0.32%
Recently we have offered a full grouping of stocks and trends for a bear market and for a recession, and hopefully that won’t be too prominent all year. Unfortunately, it isn’t feeling like anything better.
With the S&P at 1312 and some change, it is at a critical level right now. The low close for 2008 so far in January on the S&P 500 Index was 1,310.50 and the intra-day lows were far worse at 1,270.05.
Jon C. Ogg
March 4, 2008
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
