Topic: How To Invest

Dear Pat: I am trying to allocate my investments across the economic sectors that you name. However, I am finding that there does not appear to be a consensus among professionals as to the number of sectors, the names of the sectors and where each stock goes. For example, you put RioCan in the manufacturing sector while some sources put it in the financial sector. Your comments would be appreciated.

Article Excerpt

Our main criteria for deciding if a company falls into the Consumer or Manufacturing sector is whether it behaves in a cyclical or non-cyclical manner. A manufacturing company is subject to the ups and downs of the economic cycle; consumer firms benefit from continuous and often habitual use of their products and services, so they have much more stability in their sales and earnings, regardless of the state of the economy. It doesn’t matter who the company sells to. For instance, consumers buy cars and soup. But carmakers are subject to wide swings in demand, so they go in the Manufacturing sector. Soup demand is far more stable, so soup makers go into the Consumer sector. While the soup company “manufactures” its products, its customers buy them during good and bad economic times. Real estate investment trusts (REITs) like RioCan mostly lease office or industrial space to firms that go through swings along with the rise and fall of the economy, so…