Topic: How To Invest

Pat: I was just wondering why you classify REIT investments in the Manufacturing sector. Thanks again for your time.

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 in the Consumer sector. While the soup company “manufactures” its products, its customers buy them during good economic times or bad. Real estate investment trusts (REITs) lease mostly office space or industrial space to firms that go through swings along with the rise and fall of the economy, so…