A withdrawal of trooper in Iraq is not a lowering of the defense budget, this is a common misunderstanding among investors. These are security homeruns, not the hyper growth stocks that you may be accustomed to tradings. The defense budget is going to stay strong and is more likely to increase than decrease over the next two years. Even Hillary and Obama are not talking about cutting the defense budget. It remains true that the defense budget has historically been increasing steadily, and I don't see this trend changing.

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I think Defense stock will continue to do well for the next few years and start to taper off as the presidential office changes.

Five interesting stocks - UTX, GD, LMT, RTN, and NOC. I agree that defense spending will always be big portion of the national budget, but the key to that is that many of the costs in our federal budget include personnel and legacy costs and that is the driver for growth. Over decade periods, spending on new contracts, machinery, etc. can fluctuate and there have been periods, most recently in the 1990s, where defense companies, particularly UTX and RTN, have languished. With the likelihood of a withdrawal in Iraq and a serious restructuring of our military after the next election, the cycle for outsized gains in defense stocks may becoming to an end. That's not to say they won't continue to be steady performers. All of them offer moderate dividends, so I would probably agree that they are defensive, I just don't know if they're the homeruns you describe.