5 Best Defensive Stocks To Buy For 2014

The energy sector has captured only 75% of the return in the S&P 500 over the last two years. In spite of this recent underperformance, there are several compelling reasons to maintain, at least, a market weighting in energy right now, says James Stack, editor of InvesTech Market Analyst.

With more than four years of bull market behind us, and divergences, or potential warning flags starting to appear, it's important to focus on defensive late-stage sectors.

The energy sector is typically a late-stage bull market leader and has historically held up well in bear markets.

Data from Ned Davis Research looks at the S&P 500 sectors ranked on their average performance in the final third of bull markets over the last 40 years. Energy is a late-stage sector that beat the S&P 500 Index. Since 1974, energy has outperformed the S&P 500 in two-thirds of late-stage bull markets.

The energy sector also provides a valuable inflation and US dollar hedge, and with the burdensome level of US debt, the dollar remains vulnerable.

Top 10 New Stocks To Watch Right Now: CoreSite Realty Corporation(COR)

CoreSite Realty Corporation operates as real investment trust in the United States. The company engages in the ownership, acquisition, construction, and management of data centers. It provides data centers that optimize, secure, and interconnect the mission-critical IT assets of the organizations. The company offers private data centers and suites, cage-to-cabinet colocation, and interconnection services, such as Any2, CoreSite's Internet exchange. Its data centers are located in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay and Northern Virginia areas, Chicago, and New York City. The company provides its data centre services to enterprises, cloud providers, financial firms, and Government agencies. As of March 31, 2011, its property portfolio included 11 operating data center facilities, 1 data center under construction, and 1 development site. The company was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Ong Kang Wei]

  For example, Digital Realty (DLR) is the undoubted leader in the data storage industry, with a market cap of $8.3B. Its other three competitors, DuPont Fabros (DFT), CoreSite Realty (COR) and CyrusOne (CONE), have market caps of $1.5B, $930M and $430M respectively. In addition, with the level of complexity involving Digital's business making it immensely difficult for companies to operate data centre facilities, the company is in a good position for future growth. The company also has a wide network of 595 tenants (significantly more than other competitors), including CenturyLink (CTL), AT&T and Morgan Stanley (MS). This further secures its long term business prospects and also its dominance over its competitors.

• [By Dividends4Life]

  CoreSite Realty Corporation (COR) engages in the ownership, acquisition, construction, and management of data centers. December 5th the company increased its quarterly dividend 30% to $0.35 per share. The dividend is payable January 15, 2014, to shareholders of record on December 31, 2013. The yield based on the new payout is 4.7%.

• [By Monica Wolfe]

  CoreSite Realty Corp (COR)

  During the second quarter, Columbia Wanger increased their holdings in CoreSite Realty by 256.43%. The fund purchased a total of 1,176,650 shares of the company�� stock. They purchased these shares at an average price of $34.19 and since then the price per share has increased an additional 4.1%.

5 Best Defensive Stocks To Buy For 2014: American Woodmark Corp (AMWD)

American Woodmark Corporation, incorporated on April 21, 1980, manufactures and distributes kitchen cabinets and vanities for the remodeling and new home construction markets. The Company offers framed stock cabinets in approximately 550 different cabinet lines, ranging in price from relatively inexpensive to medium-priced styles. Styles vary by design and color from natural wood finishes to low-pressure laminate surfaces. The product offering of stock cabinets includes 86 door designs in 18 colors. Stock cabinets consist of a common box with standard interior components and a maple, oak, cherry, or hickory front frame, door and/or drawer front. The Company�� product is primarily sold under the brand names of American Woodmark, Timberlake, Shenandoah Cabinetry, Potomac, and Waypoint Living Spaces.

The Company�� product is sold on a national basis across the United States to the remodeling and new home construction markets. The Company services these markets through three primary channels, which include home centers, builders, and independent dealers and distributors. The Company provides complete installation services to its direct builder customers through its network of nine service centers that are strategically located throughout the United States. The Company distributes its products to each market channel directly from four assembly plants through a third party logistics network. The primary raw materials used include hard maple, oak, cherry, soft maple, and hickory lumber and plywood.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By John Udovich]

  After the bedroom, the kitchen is probably the place where we spend the most time awake in our homes with small cap kitchen stocks Caesarstone Sdot-Yam Ltd (NASDAQ: CSTE) and American Woodmark Corporation (NASDAQ: AMWD) along with diversified midcap Fortune Brands Home & Security Inc (NYSE: FBHS) all putting in a good performance. After all, any sort of housing recovery with more new homes being sold will�help kitchen stocks and so will increased sales of older or foreclosed homes that need to have their kitchens remodeled. But which is the better kitchen stock for investors? Here is�closer look at all three:

5 Best Defensive Stocks To Buy For 2014: Choice Hotels International Inc. (CHH)

Choice Hotels International, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a hotel franchisor worldwide. It franchises lodging properties under its proprietary brand names, including Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Quality, Clarion, Sleep Inn, Econo Lodge, Rodeway Inn, MainStay Suites, Suburban Extended Stay Hotel, Cambria Suites, and Ascend Collection brands. As of March 31, 2011, it operated 6,128 open hotels comprising 492,733 rooms, as well as 606 hotels consisting of 49,908 rooms under construction, awaiting conversion, or approved for development in 49 states, and the District of Columbia in the United States; and approximately 40 countries and other territories. The company was founded in 1981 and is based in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Sean Williams]

  Don't make the wrong Choice
  I predict that 2013 will be the return of the "staycation." In the depths of the recession, instead of taking expensive getaways, consumers chose simply to take time off work and stay home or locally. I think we have the perfect confluence of factors that could make life difficult for Choice Hotels International (NYSE: CHH  ) , operator of Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, and a multitude of other mid-price-point hotels.

• [By Jeremy Bowman]

  What: Shares of Choice Hotels (NYSE: CHH  ) were getting picked last by investors today, falling 11% after cutting EPS guidance in its quarterly report.

• [By John Udovich]

  Small cap hotel stock La Quinta Holdings Inc (NYSE: LQ) just had its IPO to raise a lower than expected $650 million after being priced below its expected range, meaning its worth taking a closer look at the stock which�is focused on the�mid-priced hotel market along with the performance of potential benchmarks like hotel stocks Marriott International Inc (NASDAQ: MAR), Choice Hotels International Inc (NYSE: CHH) and Wyndham Worldwide Corporation (NYSE: WYN).

5 Best Defensive Stocks To Buy For 2014: Boise Inc (BZ)

Boise Inc., incorporated on February 1, 2007, is a manufacturer of packaging and paper products, including corrugated containers and sheets, containerboard, protective packaging products, imaging papers for the office and home, printing and converting papers, label and release papers, newsprint and market pulp. The Company operates in the United States, Europe, Mexico, and Canada. The Company operates in three segments: Packaging, Paper, and Corporate and Other. The Company�� newsprint is sold primarily to newspaper publishers in the southern and southwestern the United States. During the year ended December 31, 2012, approximately 38% of the Company�� uncoated freesheet paper was sold to OfficeMax Incorporated, its customer.

Packaging

In the Packaging segment, the Company manufactures and sells linerboard, containerboard, corrugated containers and sheets, protective packaging products, and newsprint. Linerboard is a paperboard, which when combined with corrugating medium is used in the manufacture of corrugated sheets and containers. Corrugated sheets are containerboard sheets that are sold primarily to converters that produce a variety of corrugated products. Corrugated containers are corrugated sheets that have been fed through converting machines to create containers, which are used in the packaging of fresh fruit and vegetables, processed food, beverages, and other industrial and consumer products. Stock boxes are corrugated containers manufactured to pre-set dimensions.

Protective packaging products include multi-material customized packaging solutions, which may utilize kraft paper-based honeycomb corrugated packaging, foamed plastics, and air pocket packing materials Newsprint is a paper commonly used for printing newspapers, other publications, and advertising material. During the year ended December 31, 2012, its Packaging segment produced approximately 613,000 short tons of linerboard, and its Paper segment produced approximately 135,000 short tons! of corrugating medium. It manufactures linerboard and newsprint on two machines at its mill in DeRidder, Louisiana. It also manufactures corrugated containers and sheets and protective packaging products at 26 plants located in North America and Europe.

Paper

In its Paper segment, the Company manufactures and sells three general categories of products: communication-based papers; packaging-based papers, and market pulp. Its communication-based papers include cut-size office papers, and printing and converting papers. Its Packaging-Demand-Driven Papers include Label and release papers, Flexible packaging papers, and Corrugating medium. Printing and converting papers are used by commercial printers or converters to manufacture envelopes, forms, and other commercial paper products.

Its packaging-based papers include label and release papers and corrugating medium. The Label and release papers include label facestocks, as well as release liners. The coated and uncoated papers sold to customers create packaging products for food and nonfood applications. Market pulp is sold to customers in the open market for use in the manufacture of paper products. The Company manufactures its Paper segment products at three mills, all located in the United States.

Corporate and Other

The Company�� Corporate and Other segment includes transportation assets, such as rail cars and trucks, which it uses to transport its products from its manufacturing sites. The Company provides transportation services not only to its own facilities but also, on a limited basis, to third parties. Rail cars and trucks are typically leased.

The Company competes with International Paper Company, Rock-Tenn Company, Georgia-Pacific LLC, Packaging Corporation of America, Longview Fibre Paper, Packaging, Inc, Green Bay Packaging Inc., KapStone Paper, TexCorr, L.P., Resolute Forest Product, SP Newsprint Co. and Domtar Corporation.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Packaging Corp. of America�(PKG) has jumped 6.3% to $57.99 after it said it would buy Boise (BZ) for $1.28 billion. Boise has gained 26% to $12.55.