Procter & Gamble (PG)

A good, blue-chip name to own. Pretty steady consumer products business. If there were concerns about the market selling off or some kind of risks out there, this is a pretty "steady Eddie" business, and the kind of name you would want to own in a tougher equity market environment.

One of the great consumer product companies. However, we’ve seen the entire retail sector come under pressure, mainly generic brands coming out of the supermarkets nibbling away at the super brands. The company has implemented cost cutting, going from a growth company to more of a stable company. This is one you can put away and sleep at nights, and gradually get higher dividends out of it. Dividend yield of around 3%.

(A Top Pick July 31/17. Down 3%.) Tends to do well in the summer because it is a consumer staple stock. Investors are looking for dividends and more stable earnings. This year we’ve seen some excitement in the stock market in the summer, so investors haven’t been attracted. At the same time expectations on interest rates have been moving up, so bond proxies haven’t performed well. 3.2% dividend yield.

There are a number of companies like this that are fairly expensive. There are also a lot of questions around their ability to compound top line organic growth. He tends to shy away from this one.

If you have strong fundamentals, technicals and seasonality, that is a good thing. There is an activist investor trying to take a seat on the board, and is pushing the company to move from 145 lines down to about 70 products. They are responding. They’ve cut costs dramatically. That is a good thing from a fundamental perspective. Seasonally, this is a good company to be in. Seasonality lasts until about mid October. It’s a place to hide. Dividend yield of 3.06%. (Analysts’ price target is $91.)

There has been a move back into defensive stocks lately, which is how this would be categorized. It has some activist investors investing in the name. This has underperformed for years. You will do okay in the next little while, but he wouldn’t be a big, long-term holder of this. There is more money to be made in Tech or a more discretionary consumer name. There is not enough growth in this.

It has had quite a good run over the long haul. Recently it had a pop after going sideways for a while. She tends to like these stocks when we are worried about the economy. It is fully valued right now. This is not a buying opportunity. It is a good long term holding.

They recently took their massive amount of brands and brought it down to a much smaller level of branding. That has helped the stock a little, compared to other consumer staple names. Consumer staples seems a bit expensive. This one is trading at about 23X earnings, with about a 7% growth rate. That is not really cheap.

There are a lot of expenses in some of these companies. If they can cut the expenses profits will go up. There is not a lot of growth. This company realized that recently, so they are a little bit ahead of Unilever (UL-N) in cutting expenses, which gave the stock a nice reaction. Keep in mind that you are not going to get a lot of growth.

(Top Pick Feb 5/16, Up 16.09%) They are in the sights of a hostile investor. It got beaten down Sept. to Dec. last year. The stock has now broken out and it is quite positive. He expects it would work quite well in any correction. He moved to XLP-N, which he loves.

Has owned this for a long time, somewhat frustratingly, because it hasn’t done very much. It pays a very generous dividend. Prefers Unilever (UL-N) because it has higher free cash flow yield. Although he is not selling his holdings in this company, there are better names to buy.

It is a bet on China. They have been underperforming there. Diapers are now being bought from Japan. They were told by the Chinese that their products were old and outdated.

Mega company with 23 brands that generate over a billion $ in revenues and it is about as global as you can get.

This is a way to play the consumer staples sector where you are trying to get the best of the group. Has an upside target of around $97. The risk/reward is pretty good from here.

You really can’t go wrong with a big consumer discretionary like this. He would have no problems with owning this for long periods of time. The issue is that they have a lot of global sales and the US$ is stronger. There are issues showing up in some of the emerging markets. A classic story of headwinds overseas. Valuation has come down and it is trading at a 21X PE ratio.