Key Points: Consumer staples have had a strong start to the year, and we want to know if this is anything more than a dead cat bounce. In this report, we assess the appeal of consumer staples stocks from both a tactical and a fundamental perspective. After years of underperformance, valuations have compressed, but our analysis says that buying staples because they’re cheap isn’t a winning strategy. Figure 7 shows that investors are better off

Key Points: Companies tend to follow a predictable life cycle. The key is for them to act their age. We’ve seen far too many companies push for growth beyond their prime, and it rarely turns out well. There’s not a lot of green space left when it comes to the consumer arena, so it’s incumbent upon investors to make sure companies are aging gracefully. There’s no shame in getting old. Modest organic growth coupled with

Key Points: Consumer sentiment used to give us a read on the consumers’ psyche, but the metric has gone mad. The consumer needs a new therapist, and we’re eager to fill the void. This report is a psych evaluation of sorts – we use hard data to assess soft concepts like (i) the consumers’ sensitivity to price, (ii) their tendency to trade down, (iii) the willingness to spend from wealth, and (iv) their love affair

Key Points: Gen Z was born in the era of social media, came of age during a global pandemic and are launching their careers in the face of AI. It’s been well documented that their mental state has suffered as a result, but the aim of this report is to understand how their behavior will shape consumer spending in the months and years ahead. The first section details the Gen Z predicament. The second offers

Key Points: AI is the most dominant theme in the broader market, but we don’t think it’s driven a whole lot of alpha within the consumer universe just yet. Investors in consumer stocks are busy grappling with a potential soft patch and a subsequent recovery once the OBBB kicks in. When short-term volatility subsides, AI is likely to take center stage. The data center boom is great for chip makers, hyper-scalers and utilities, but it’s

Key Points: Global brands have shed $1.5Tr in relative market value over the past two years, and the effect isn’t limited to a single sector or a single country. We’re in a brand-emic, and we think it’s a better idea to invest in high-quality retailers than to hope for a turnaround in global brands. Retailers sell an array of brands, and that portfolio approach feels right at this point in time. So far, betting on