Consumer Discretion

I am perusing the excellent list of the best performing stocks by group from Bespoke Investment Group and am amazed at the classifications applied to individual stock groupings. For instance, Ford, Goodyear Tire, Amazon and Starbucks are all classified as "Consumer Discretionary". Ridiculous! In other words, if I am trying to get to work, I just may decide to stop by Starbucks and buy a doppio, low-fat, no-foam latte or I may not. While waiting at a stoplight, I may use my MePhone to buy a book at Amazon.com or not (depending on how observant I am of anti-texting laws). If I get a flat tire, I may just buy another one or maybe I will just continue to drive around town, picking up the kids and the wife with the 50 MPH spare spinning on the rear passenger side! And if that one blows, I will just blow some spray foam into it and drive back and forth to work never exceeding 15 MPH!

Of course I am over-reacting as usual, but I think that this is an indicator of the problems with our economic and financial statistics. The stocks of AMZN and SBUX are going to behave very differently from F and GT. Additionally, CSX is listed as an industrial. While the correlation may be higher in this case, it would seem to me that CSX is a transportation stock and should be more comparable to truckers like FWRD and shippers like FDX, than Stanley Toolworks and Illinois Toolworks.