Guns or butter?

A fascinating study from the FT here: I quote:

Guns or butter? It is a question that has framed national debates over how economies should allocate resources and provided a neat introduction for textbooks on macroeconomics, for the best part of a century. For the market, the choice so far this decade is clear: take guns.

In 2007, for the eighth year in a row, the S&P aerospace and defence index beat the market. While the S&P 500 is still, remarkably, down slightly for the decade, the defence sector has risen 111.5 per cent (with a total return of 141.6 per cent). The broader Spade defence index, which includes smaller stocks, has done better, with a 161.3 per cent rise since 1999.
Consumer staples have beaten the market as well, but butter has come nowhere near to beating guns. The S&P consumer staples index rose only 44 per cent for the first eight years of this decade. Defence again emerged victorious in 2007

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!