With a defensive stock strategy, are value stocks a better play than growth stocks?
Our work has shown that you can pretty much pick between them. Value has come a long way in outperforming relative to growth, so the p-e on growth has narrowed while expanding in value. Exxon Mobil (XOM ) used to be classified as value and is now growth. You should start with the financials and not a moniker like growth or value. Investors need a wide net of coverage in picking stocks. What financial stocks might you like? We would view some of the broadly based money-center banks like Citigroup (C ) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM ) as attractive opportunities to play the global marketplace for banking and the rebirth of capital-market activity. We like Goldman Sachs (GS ) and have also been big fans of smaller banks — banks going through conversions like Hudson City Bancorp (HCBK ). But as you can imagine, the performance of your rank-and-file banks as the yield curve flattened and short-term money costs rose has been mediocre at best after four strong years of outperformance. Once again, y
