Picking Industries Counts More Than Stock Picks: John Dorfman

For much of this year, consumer discretionary stocks were the best performing group in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. With the economy reviving, consumers started to came out of their shells, and investors figured that trend would continue.

It didn’t. After rising 17 percent in the first four months of the year, consumer discretionary stocks turned tail and dropped about 12 percent, falling a bit more than the stock market as a whole.