There’s a large camp among Wall Street analysts that assumes when the technology and other growth sectors plunge, the safety trade is in consumer staples. Those are the stocks that make the things we use for daily living. Toothpaste, soap, and just about anything they sell at Costco (COST), Walmart (WMT), or Target (TGT).
I’ve never been in that camp. Because in contemporary markets, it is more likely that even brief flights to quality will soon see those lower-volatility stocks succumb to whatever is ailing the broader market. In part, this is because these stocks tend to be richly valued to begin with, as the market respects their relatively stable financial conditions.
