Dot-com era weight loss returns in U.S. consumer staples

Food, beverage, tobacco and household-product makers are almost as far out of favor in the U.S. as they were when the dot-com era ended. Their weight in the S&P 500 Index shows as much. Consumer staples amounted to 5.74% of the U.S. equity benchmark in the last three trading days of August, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The only lower readings in the industry gauge’s three-decade history occurred in March 2000, when its share of the S&P 500 fell as low as 5.35%. “The group offers zero advantage,” Strategas Research Partners LLC wrote in a Twitter post Tuesday with a similar chart.

U.S. consumer stocks echo dot-com era performance

U.S. consumer stocks are behaving as they did during the Internet bubble of the 1990s. The S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary Index, including automakers, media companies and retailers, closed Wednesday at its highest level relative to the food, beverage and tobacco companies in the S&P 500 Consumer Staples Index since March 2000, when the dot-com era peaked. The indexes’ ratio was less than 3 percent from a record, set the same month. “That trend is not yet showing signs of coming to an end,” Andrew Adams, a strategist at Raymond James Financial Inc., wrote Wednesday in a report with a similar chart.