Prior to the financial crisis of 2008/09, it was widely believed in the stock market that certain sectors – most notably utilities, pharmaceuticals, food retailing and tobacco – were far less vulnerable to market downturns.
The reality has been very different, as the figures below indicate, with three of the FTSE-100 companies under review – BT Group (especially over the last 18 months), Centrica and Tesco – enduring a desperately difficult decade.
It is fair to ask how this long-standing market shibboleth – part of stock market folklore for generations – has been tarnished.
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