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Professor Ken French is a well-known finance professor at Dartmouth. At his Web site, he keeps an impressive data library. One of the items that I like to look at every few months is the how certain industry groups have performed over the long run. Here’s the annualized return for several industry groups for the past eight decades.

Smoke 13.69%
Beer 13.51%
Banks 12.80%
Drugs 11.93%
Hardw 11.45%
Aero 11.37%
Oil 11.33%
Food 11.28%
Chips 11.22%
Meals 10.99%
Chems 10.91%
Boxes 10.84%
Fin 10.64%
Mines 10.53%
Rtail 10.49%
MedEq 10.40%
Autos 10.38%
Mach 10.33%
Insur 10.21%
Coal 10.16%
ElcEq 10.06%
Other 9.95%
Clths 9.83%
Hshld 9.78%
BldMt 9.67%
Telcm 9.31%
Books 9.23%
BusSv 9.10%
Util 9.08%
Ships 8.97%
LabEq 8.87%
Fun 8.76%
Steel 8.45%
Trans 8.41%
Txtls 7.94%
Cnstr 7.91%
Agric 7.83%
Toys 7.45%
Whlsl 5.54%
RlEst 3.86%

I guess vice is far more profitable than virtue, which I kinda suspected.

Posted by edelfenbein at November 10, 2005 2:52 PM