Professional money managers have a strong preference for one stock sector in particular, along with cash dividends. A group of 100 institutional money managers surveyed by S&P Global Market Intelligence favours the healthcare sector and dividend stocks for defensive allocation. The S&P 500 Index has rallied 10% since June 22 from a deep decline, but there are different schools of thought about whether investors are out of the woods yet. Mark Hulbert has called the recent action a bear-market rally, setting the stage for the stock market to resume its slide. Meanwhile, analysts at BlackRock recommend investors lean toward defensive stocks. One way to do that is to focus on the healthcare sector. This is generally considered a defensive group of stocks — after all, the population is ageing, innovation creates new treatments and medical attention is not an option for most people. A screen of health-care-sector stocks in the S&P 500 SPX, +2.13% is below. On Aug. 8, S&P Global Market Intelligence published results of a survey of money managers who oversee about $845 billion of investors’ money. This group of about 100 institutional investors remains “risk averse,” according to S&P Global, which went so far as to say that its Global Investment Manager Index indicated “overall sentiment” had its lowest point in the survey’s history.
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