This change, says Wendy Nicholson, an analyst who covers the sector for Citi, will be permanent.

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Consumer staple analyst Wendy Nicholson at Citi did some research and noticed that for the ten years leading up to 2000 beverage stocks had outperformed the broader market in Q4, while in the last ten years that pattern has reversed, and beverage stocks underperformed the market for seven of the ten.

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