Aging Baby Boomers Push Spam, Diaper Stocks to Record Valuations
- S&P 500 Dividends index posts gains to trade at record P/E
- Popularity of dividend yielding equity ETFs at all-time highs
The mother of a toddler participating in a Procter and Gamble consumer research study changes her daughter's diaper a diaper test at P&G's baby care laboratory in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. on Friday, Feb. 28, 2014. Luke Sharrett for Bloomberg
Photographer: Luke Sharrett/BloombergFor all the attention paid to the massive snap-back in riskier stocks in the last two months, a somewhat less glamorous group has quietly been reaching record valuations.
They’re the companies that peddle soap, diapers and ready-to-eat food that also happen to be the market’s biggest payers of dividends. Prized as ports in the storm, their run-up is now neck-and-neck with virtually any equity category you can name in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, amid one of its biggest rebounds in cyclical equities on record.