投资选股首选消费品牌

    汤姆•拉索如今管理着约50亿美元的私募投资基金和富豪个人账户，他还记得几年前坐飞机时与邻座一位电脑公司高管的闲聊。当时，他谈到曾经持股的好时公司（Hershey Co.）时，极力夸奖这家糖果制造商对每年的巧克力销量、生产成本和售价的预测误差可以不超过0.5%，盛赞这类品牌回报率的可预见性如何如何之高。电脑公司高管只能干瞪眼，说“我不知道今年能卖出多少台笔记本电脑。”

    当然不只是巧克力公司。消费品公司能很好地预测不远的将来消费者会购买什么样的包装食品、啤酒或家用清洁剂。但是5年后，哪个品牌或哪种类型的电脑能热卖？要答对这个问题，就得有几分运气了。

    对于股票而言，可预测性和可靠性历来是吸引人的优点。而这些知名消费品牌公司为投资者所带来的显著回报更是令人惊讶。由很多此类公司组成的标准普尔必需消费品指数（The S&P Consumer Staples Index）1990年以来的总回报率为854%，远超同期标准普尔500指数536%的回报率。

    同样，拉索在自己公司Gardner Russo & Gardner管理的几支基金，1984年以来扣除费用的年均回报率也比标准普尔500指数高出10.5%-15.3%。他的策略很简单，就是买入全球最受欢迎的食品、烈酒和烟草品牌公司。这些公司的任务似乎就是让这个世界吃好喝好（以及时刻保持干净），包括雀巢（Nestlé）[旗下品牌有Cheerios谷物早餐、哈根达斯（Häagen-Dazs）冰淇淋、嘉宝（Gerber）婴儿食品以及Lean Cuisine等]、联合利华（Unilever）[旗下品牌有立顿（Lipton）茶、Hellmann's mayo、多芬（Dove）香皂和凡士林（Vaseline）等]、菲利普莫里斯（Philip Morris International）[在美国以外地区销售万宝路（Marlboro）香烟，现为拉索第一重仓股]以及跨国啤酒公司喜力控股（Heineken Holding）、SABMiller和百威英博（Anheuser-Busch InBev）。另外，他还投资了出品杰克•丹尼威士忌（Jack Daniels）、摩根船长（Captain Morgan）的蒸馏酒公司。

    Some years ago Tom Russo struck up a bit of in-flight chitchat with an executive at a computer company. Russo, who manages about $5 billion in private investment funds and individual accounts for wealthy clients, began raving about the Hershey Co. (HSY) The candymaker could forecast within a 0.5% margin how much chocolate it would sell that year, how much the chocolate would cost to produce, and what kind of prices it could charge. Russo, who owned some Hershey shares in the past, extolled the predictable returns of such brands. The computer exec just stared back. "I have no idea how many laptops we'll sell this year," he told Russo.

    It isn't just chocolate bars, of course. Consumer goods companies can pretty well anticipate what kind of packaged foods, beer, or household cleaners customers will be buying in the near future. Good luck guessing, say, which brand -- or type -- of computing device will be hot in five years.

    Predictability and dependability are appealingly old-fashioned virtues. What's surprising is how dramatically they pay off for those who invest in the companies that sell those brands. The S&P Consumer Staples Index, filled with such companies, returned a total of 854% from 1990 through today, obliterating the S&P 500's 536% return during the period.

    Similarly, the funds that Russo manages at his firm, Gardner Russo & Gardner, have trounced the S&P 500 (SPX), 15.3% to 10.5% a year, after fees, since 1984 by following a straightforward script: He buys shares of the world's most popular brands in food, alcohol, and tobacco. His holdings read like a batch of businesses tasked with keeping the world fed and happy (and sometimes clean). There's Nestlé (whose brands include Cheerios cereal, Häagen-Dazs ice cream, Gerber baby foods, and Lean Cuisine), Unilever (UL) (everything from Lipton tea and Hellmann's mayo to Dove soap and Vaseline), Philip Morris International (PM) (which sells Marlboro cigarettes outside the U.S. and is Russo's top holding), and global beer brewers Heineken Holding, SABMiller, and Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD). He owns shares of the distillers behind Jack Daniels (BFA) and Captain Morgan (DEO) too.