Utilities Shock Wall Streeters With Gains This Year

The "safe stocks" of the S&P 500, including mostly utilities, have outperformed the market by nearly 23 to 1 this year.

USA Today discovered that the 10 stocks in the S&P 500 with the lowest relative volatility the past five years -- names like AGL Resources AGL and Consolidated Edison ED -- have shot up an average of 23 percent this year.

Making meaningful gains in the stock market requires an appetite for risk - calculated, weighed, measured risk, but risk all the same. Super-safe stocks produce underwhelming returns, and utilities are some of the safest investments around.

Investing heavily in utilities is often seen as "playing it safe," relegated to income investors and those with a short investment horizon, no time to reap the far superior gains that come with more volatile plays.

It's not unusual for investors to turn to bonds and utilities when the market is in turmoil, and with talk of rate hikes subsiding (interest rate hikes can make dividend yields on utilities look less attractive), look for this trend to continue.