What can 1-year stock returns teach us?

In light of the current volatile times, Stock Market Investment Partner chose to look at some facts instead of making hypothesis about the fate of the stock market and the economy. The following is an arbitrary selection of stocks and their 1-year returns to see if any conclusion can be reached. Keep in mind that the following is a small sample intended to give a general idea.

Consumer Staples:
Procter & Gamble: -3.18%
Colgate Palmolive: +0.69%
Johnson & Johnson: -2.51%
Kraft Foods: -7.49%
General Mills: +19.05%
Kellogg: +1.58%

High-profile tech stocks:
Apple: -39.21%
Research in Motion: -47.38%
Dell: -46.64%
Amazon: -30.18%
Ebay: -53.83%

Former Darlings:
Crocs: -96.17%
Mosaic: -29.08%
Citigroup: -63.95%

As you can see, a good old (boring) safe portfolio with a good allocation in consumer staples would have outperformed the "fashionable hot stocks" portfolio in the last year. By the same token, your sleep would have outperformed your know-it-all neighbour's! It's an old message, but if you now realize that you can't handle high stock market volatility, allow a bigger portion of your portfolio to stable non-cyclical companies.