Tactics for Sector Investing

Many investors hold a portfolio of index funds designed to track the movements of the broad market. While this approach has benefits for cost-effectiveness and ease of management, it can be suboptimal when it comes to risk management and minimizing volatility. Often, investing passively means exposing your portfolio to the market's movements and its current composition.

For example, the S&P 500 index is currently weighted 26% towards the technology sector as of October 17^th, 2022. This sector has historically delivered high growth but also incurred substantial volatility and drawdowns during unfavourable economic conditions. Thus, an index investor who holds an S&P 500 fund must accept the high weighting of technology stocks and their risk exposure if they seek to emulate the market.

This may not be desirable to investors who have objectives beyond growth at all costs, such as preserving of capital or reducing volatility. In this case, a sector-oriented investing strategy might be a better approach.

What is sector investing?

A stock market sector can be defined as a group of companies with similar characteristics to each other, commonly in terms of products and services. Currently, MSCI uses the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) of 11 sectors. They are:

1. Energy

2. Materials

3. Industrials

4. Utilities

5. Healthcare

6. Financials

7. Consumer Discretionary

8. Consumer Staples

9. Information Technology

10. Communication Services

11. Real Estate

Sector investing refers to the practice of over-weighting, or "tilting" certain market sectors in a proportion beyond what their natural market capitalization weights are.

For example, the real estate sector currently comprises 2.66% of the S&P 500 as of October 17^th, 2022. An investor who wishes to overweight real estate companies in their portfolio can hold additional stocks to achieve exposure above and beyond this 2.66%. Thus, this investor has implemented a real estate sector tilt.

The importance and benefits of sector investing

Sector investing is a strategy that can help investors position their portfolios to take advantage of changes in the business cycle. This is because each sector is impacted in different ways by changes in macroeconomic variables.

In general, the business cycle can be characterized by four fairly predictable and consistent phases, each of which has historically benefited different sectors. As seen below, investors can tactically shift their allocations via a "sector rotation" strategy to optimally position their portfolio.

Sector rotation in the current market environment

The economic and market environment from 2021 to 2022 has been characterized by persistently high inflation, coupled with restrictive central bank monetary policy in the form of rising interest rates.

Under this regime, commodity prices have soared, while consumer discretionary spending has decreased. Housing demand and prices have fallen as mortgage rates increased. Fears of a "hard landing" for the economy are present as market participants price in the risk of a pending recession.

As a result, from January 2021 to September 30^th, 2022certain sectors have significantly outperformed the S&P 500 index. In particular, the energy, utilities, and consumer staples sectors contained in the S&P 500 have significantly outperformed the overall index benchmark.

*YTD returns and returns since January 2021 are until September 30^th, 2022 with all dividends reinvested. It is not possible to invest directly in market indices. Indices returns do not reflect trading costs, transaction fees, commissions, or actual taxes due on investment returns. Source: Portfolio Visualizer.

In the current market environment, investors can consider defensive sectors that are resilient when growth slows down and monetary policy tightens. This could include:

• The healthcare sector, which historically has lower elasticity thanks to its evergreen demand, thus reducing its sensitivity to economic fluctuations.
• The energy sector, which offers an inflation hedge given that it benefits from rising commodity prices and is less correlated with other assets, providing diversification benefits.

ETFs as a tool for sector exposure

Investors and advisors who attempt to implement a sector investing strategy via traditional stock-picking methods face some difficulties. Buying individual sector equities can be time-consuming, expensive in terms of trading costs, and subject to idiosyncratic, company specific risk. It is also capital intensive, as shares of certain companies can have a high price.

A solution here is using exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track a "basket" of stocks from a particular sector. These funds can be actively managed to outperform a sector benchmark, or passively indexed to track one instead. Either way, sector ETFs provide access to an instantly diversified portfolio via a single ticker. They can be bought and sold on exchanges like any other security intra-day.

The benefit here is excellent liquidity, transparency, and ease of portfolio management. Thanks to the ETF creation/redemption mechanism, bid-ask spreads are minimized compared to trading dozens of different individual stocks. ETF holdings are reported frequently, which allows investors to see their underlying exposures on the fly. Finally, managing few sector funds leads to lower portfolio turnover.

For reasonable expense ratios, our lineup of sector ETFs provide investors and advisors with instant exposure to a variety of stock market sectors from various geographies and different management styles. For more information, see our full lineup of sector equity ETFs.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMERS

Commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with an investment in exchange-traded funds (ETFs). You will usually pay brokerage fees to your dealer if you purchase or sell units of an ETF on recognized Canadian exchanges. If the units are purchased or sold on these Canadian exchanges, investors may pay more than the current net asset value when buying units of the ETF and may receive less than the current net asset value when selling them. Please read the prospectus before investing. Important information about an exchange-traded fund is contained in its prospectus. ETFs are not guaranteed; their values change frequently, and past performance may not be repeated.

This document is provided as a general source of information and should not be considered personal, legal, accounting, tax or investment advice, or construed as an endorsement or recommendation of any entity or security discussed. Every effort has been made to ensure that the material contained in this document is accurate at the time of publication.  Market conditions may change which may impact the information contained in this document. All charts and illustrations in this document are for illustrative purposes only. They are not intended to predict or project investment results. Individuals should seek the advice of professionals, as appropriate, regarding any particular investment. Investors should consult their professional advisors prior to implementing any changes to their investment strategies. 

Certain statements contained in this communication are based in whole or in part on information provided by third parties and CI GAM has taken reasonable steps to ensure their accuracy. Market conditions may change which may impact the information contained in this document.