Stodgy, boring and defensive stocks aren’t sexy, but often outperform the stocks featured on business channels, says Mike Larson.

Sometimes when I watch the financial news, I long for a simpler time when Amazon (AMZN) was just a jungle, Apple (AAPL) was just a fruit, and Alphabet i.e. Google (GOOGL) was the basis for a language.

Why? Because I feel like those are the only stocks you ever hear about. It’s like the thousands of other stocks that change hands every day don’t even matter.

It’s a shame because the other stocks you don’t hear about are leading this market and better alternatives at this stage in the economic and credit cycle.

Take the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLU). Stodgy, boring, defensive. Those are some of the nicer adjectives used to describe this sector ETF. But it’s up roughly 15.4% in the last year.

The Real Estate Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLRE) is another ETF that invests in higher-yielding and traditionally more defensive REITs. Call it dull if you will. But it has generated a total return of 16.7% in the past year.

Those gains are roughly double the 7.7% you could have made in the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK) over the same period. As for the AdvisorShares New Tech and Media ETF (FNG), it’s down around 22% in the past 12 months.

Now, it goes without saying that tech stocks rebounded in January as part of the market’s oversold bounce. But which stocks and sectors should you trust in the longer term? Which aren’t just likely to see quick bounces, but remain trustworthy after that?

The same “Safe Money”-style investments that have been working best for more than a year now. Let the 30-second soundbite analysts on television beat those other dead-horse stocks all day long. I’ll keep focusing on names that generate reliable, steady gains in the good times, and that won’t let you down when the going gets tough.

Take Clorox (CLX), a company I’ve been recommending in my Safe Money Report for a while now. Its shares just jumped the most in any day since September 2014 after the household products maker beat earnings estimates and forecast solid results going forward.

Another utility that I recommended subscribers add only last month has been rocketing higher, with shares hitting their highest level in almost 11 years this week. Why? The company has been paying down debt. It’s wisely restructuring its way out of bad investments made years ago. And it still yields 100+ basis points more than the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY).

If you want the details on winners like these, just give my Safe Money Report a try. The names you’ll find may fly under the radar, unlike the companies you hear about every day. But that’s perfectly fine by me, because they’re generating reliable, steady income ... spinning off nice capital gains ... and best suited for this stage of the economic and market cycles.

Until next time.