The investment industry’s Global Industry Classification Standard, GICS, was created in 1999 by MSCI Inc. (ticker: MSCI) and S&P Global Inc. (SPGI). The idea was to standardize industrial and economic sector classifications and make it easier for investors to compare companies and evaluate securities.
The GICS organized companies into 11 sectors:
- Communication services
- Consumer discretionary
- Consumer staples
- Energy
- Financials
- Health care
- Industrials
- Information technology (IT)
- Materials
- Real Estate
- Utilities
Some investors design equity portfolios to include at least one stock from each of the 11 GICS sectors. That might sound like a good idea, but with more than 6,000 stocks trading on the major U.S. exchanges – each assigned to one of the 11 sectors – choosing the top stocks from each sector can be a difficult task. This updated list of 11 high-quality stocks from each of the 11 sectors should be a good starting point for you to begin your research.
This post originally appeared at U.S. News & World Report.