In spite of the trend toward diversity, most of the hundreds of stocks in the stock market can be grouped into one product or service category or another.
Which group is for you? Well, there are about fifty clearly defined industries in this country, even more if you are particular enough to separate aircraft manufacturers from airline operators, or natural gas from oils, or Class 1 railroads from lesser lines. Even these groupings are by no means complete. The list could be fleshed out with banks, insurance companies, leather-products companies, glass and container manufacturers, shipbuilders and fleet operators, textile millers, sugar growers, and radio and television manufacturers and broadcasters.
All of this reflects the wonderful and confusing diversity of American industry. Among it all there should be a few good stocks to buy. Indeed, there are. But it will not take much investigation to learn that each of these industrial groupings has a reputation, and that even the best reputations may be subject to cyclical slumps. These reputations are variously described, but roughly they can be said to follow the gradations given to stocks. There are Blue Chip industries, there are “businessmen’s risks,” there are out-and-out speculations. Or, you might say, there are industries of investment caliber, those of good quality, those responsive to abrupt up-and downswings, or, again, those which are speculative. Some are growth industries, some have hit then: peak and leveled off on a comfortable plateau, some are on their way down and out.
As always, generalities must be taken with a grain of salt. Within a group, one stock or another may run entirely counter to the general trend, either up or down. (And it is precisely this sort of contrary action that occasionally enables shrewd traders to buck the trend and come up with a winner.)
Among the industries of solid reputations, you would have to put the utilities first. This has not always been so. Manipulation with public-utility holding companies was one of the skyrocketing scandals of the days before the Crash. In the 30 years since then, however, utilities have regained status among the solid rocks of the securities markets. They are rarely spectacular performers.
Rate regulation by state power commissions permits