Wall Street’s safest stock is having its biggest day since the pandemic crash — here’s why investors are paying up

Investors are paying tech-stock prices for detergent and diapers.

Procter & Gamble (PG), the maker of Tide, Pampers, and Charmin, had its best day since March 2020 on Thursday, adding more than $20 billion in market value. It closed at its highest level since February, just shy of its 2026 high, even as the broader market slid.

P&G gave investors exactly what they wanted: steady growth. Sales rose 4% in its fiscal first quarter, mostly because people bought more of its products. The unit that makes Tide and P&G’s other cleaning products grew 5%. The company also stuck with its full-year outlook.

“The consumer is with us,” CFO Andre Schulten told Yahoo Finance on Thursday. In a market searching for safety, that was enough.

Investors are paying up for safety

P&G now costs more than some of the biggest names in tech.

Investors often measure how expensive a stock is with the price-to-earnings ratio, or P/E, where the stock price is divided by the company’s earnings per share. Using next year’s expected earnings, P&G trades at about 22 times. That’s more than Microsoft (MSFT), Meta (META), and Nvidia (NVDA), which trades at less than two-thirds of P&G’s multiple.

Tech stocks have been getting cheaper because Wall Street is penciling in stronger future earnings, which makes the “E” in P/E get bigger and the ratio smaller. The recent tech selloff has knocked down their stock prices, also lowering valuations.

P&G investors are paying a hefty price for a company expecting earnings growth of 3% at most this year.

So why pay up? Investors are paying for predictability. People keep buying toothpaste and toilet paper no matter what the economy does, so P&G’s earnings rarely surprise to the downside. When markets get rocky, that kind of reliability becomes more valuable.

The whole aisle is rallying

P&G isn’t alone. Kimberly-Clark (KMB), the maker of Kleenex and Huggies, and Colgate-Palmolive (CL) each gained 4% to 5% Thursday, and Coca-Cola (KO) closed at a record.

The Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLP), which holds the household names people shop for every week, just had its best 13-day run since April 2020. Thursday alone was its best day since April 2025. Over the same stretch, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) has slipped and chip stocks have taken a beating.

Falling interest rates are helping, too. Staples stocks are often treated like bonds because they pay steady dividends. When Treasury yields fall, as they did sharply on Thursday, those dividends look more attractive by comparison.…Read more by Jared Blikre