Share tips: Stay defensive for the year ahead

Despite the recent rally in the stockmarkets, the global recovery is still fragile, says professional investor Philip Matthews. Here, he tips three income-producing defensive stocks to buy now.

The recent actions of the European Central Bank, combined with more positive data from the US, have triggered an impressive stockmarket rally in early 2012. Despite this, we continue to be concerned about potential outcomes from the eurozone crisis. So we have decided to keep most of our fund defensively positioned for now.

The overriding aim for us is to find well-run businesses with robust balance sheets which are capable of converting resilient yearly profits into dividends. We aim to find good value in defensive and economically sensitive shares.

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