2/ However, you can see that going back almost 50 years, the observation holds: capital-intensive industries (mining, construction, autos) have lagged the broader market, whereas less capital-intensive industries (tobacco, beer, drugs) have tended to outperform
3/ Measuring it by Sharpe shows it more clearly as only seven of forty-nine industries registered a higher Sharpe than the market over the last five decades. All of those were capital-light industries. "Guns" is an exception: it is the defense industry, which has > historically
4/ Interesting to note that the so-called "sin industries" were among the few that registered higher-risk adjusted returns the last five decades.
What's fascinating to me is that relative to the market, these industries suffered very little in terms of periods of poor performance. Worst 120-mo return over last ~50 years:
It's worth pointing out that equity valuations during most of the QE era were below the LT - average, presumably because low rates also signaled low growth expectations
Equity valuations didn't really peak until read GDP growth accelerated at the end pre-COVID, obviously turbocharged by the corporate tax cut. Valuations were higher in the 90s despite high rates b/c real GDP growth was huge & inflation was super low
3/ The Men Who Loved Trains is useful in detailing how crappy rails were pre de-regulation, focusing on the Penn Central collapse, the creation of Amtrak, and NSC / CSX fighting over Conrail
I haven't done the Forgotten Stocks things in a while, so I'll throw out Automatic Canteen, which was one of the growth stocks of the late 1950s as part of the vending machine craze of the period
Vending machines did ~$2B in sales then, which was significant, and what had been a duopoly in machine manufacturing became a craze:
"After all, they were the archetype of the modern growth stock; no dividends, no history, and great expectations"
Time in 1960:
'[V]ending-machine makers are now spending 10x what they used to on developing new gadgets. They are now experimenting w/ store-front units w/ a complete line of grocery staples, which could operate on a [24/7] basis'
This slide does a good job of showing why I think Balchem's spec chem business enjoys an advantage: its products are a 'critical but non-core' necessity for the majority of its end-users
New Post: @JonFell73 and I talk about more consumer staples:
-how they fare in inflationary periods
-the risk of disruption
-why charges of survivorship bias to their famous chart on starting multiples are mostly hollow
Of the 62 staples companies valued in 1973 at $1B in today's dollars, 48 > the US market (the original 21 shown + the 27 that > up until they merged or were acquired). The major underperformers were all brewers.
"Tobacco is the only Staples industry in which prices can consistently rise higher than inflation, and excise structures create a further advantage for manufacturers in disguising the level of price increase they themselves take."
"Global earnings for the Tobacco sector have grown at nearly 5% a year in USD over the last decade, nearly three times the rate of the market"