The accompanying table (click to enlarge) contains 35 companies included in the ETF Innovators (ETFI) Highly Defensive PerformIdex which are based in the U.S., Canada, and Europe with market caps over $10B that are the leaders by market cap in their defensive industry groups. The index includes 23 consumer staples and healthcare companies, with the remaining 12 companies chosen from a variety of other defensive industry groups.

(A) Mass Merchant Discount Retailer (1): Wal-Mart (WMT)

(B) Consumer Staples (11): Coca-Cola (KO), Colgate-Palmolive (CL), Diageo (DEO), General Mills (GIS), Groupe Danone (GDNNY), Kraft (KFT), Nestle (NSRGY), PepsiCo (PEP), Philip Morris International (PM), Procter & Gamble (PG), Unilever (UN)

(C) Telecom Services (4): AT&T (T), Telefonica (TEF), Verizon (VZ), Vodafone (VOD)

(D) Cable Television & Internet Access Providers (1): Comcast (CMCSA)

(E) Utilities (2): Exelon (EXC), Southern Company (SO)

(F) Fast Food Restaurants (1): McDonald's (MCD)

(G) Commodities (2): Gold Mining (1) + Agri-Biotech (1): Barrick Gold (ABX), Monsanto (MON)

(H) Healthcare (12) – Top 7 by Market Cap, Biotech (4), Generic Drugs (1): Abbott Labs (ABT), Genzyme (GENZ), Celgene (CELG), Genentech (DNA), Gilead Sciences (GILD), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Novartis (NVS), Pfizer (PFE), Roche (RHHBY), Teva Pharma (TEVA)

(I) Aerospace (Non-Commercial) & Defense (1): Lockheed Martin (LMT)

Over the past year, the index has outpaced the overall market and all of its benchmark ETFs on a total return basis with a loss of 11.7%, including losses of 25% for the Sabrient/Claymore Defensive ETF (DEF), 14% for the Consumer Staples Sector SPDR (XLP), 23.7% for the Healthcare Sector SPDR (XLV), 24.8% for the Utilities Sector SPDR (XLU), 37.5% for the Dow Jones Global Titans (DGT), 33.7% for the iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend (DVY), and 34.7% for the S&P 500 SPDR (SPY).

This equally-weighted, defensive index is only 58% as volatile as the overall market with an average market cap of about $75B and an average dividend yield of 3.2%, which is slightly above the 3% average yield for SPY. The goal of this index is to provide a combination of companies with U.S.-listed stocks to create a composite blend of traditional safe havens represented by the benchmark ETFs outlined above, rather than choosing a single sector (i.e. healthcare or consumer staples) or a specific strategy (i.e. high dividend yields or Dogs of the Dow).