Every publicly traded company gets sorted into one of 11 standardized sectors under the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), a framework jointly developed by MSCI and S&P and used consistently across the entire investing industry — from index funds to research reports to sector ETFs. The 11 sectors are: Information Technology, Health Care, Financials, Consumer Discretionary, Communication Services, Industrials, Consumer Staples, Energy, Utilities, Real Estate, and Materials. Each sector is further broken down into industry groups, industries, and sub-industries for more granular classification.
Sector classification matters well beyond simple labeling: it determines what "normal" looks like for a given company. A gross margin that would signal serious trouble for a software company (which typically runs 70-80%+ gross margins) might be perfectly healthy, even strong, for a grocery retailer (which typically runs much thinner margins as a structural feature of that business, not a sign of weakness).
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