A sector groups companies by what they do. In the UK the standard scheme is the ICB, the Industry Classification Benchmark behind the FTSE indices. The split that matters most for behaviour is cyclical against defensive. Cyclical businesses — carmakers, housebuilders, miners, airlines — rise and fall with the economy. Defensive ones — food, medicines, utilities — sell things people keep buying in a recession.
Defensive companies tend to have steadier profits and steadier dividends, which is why dividend investors drift towards them, and towards high-yielding sectors like banks and energy, and end up less diversified than they think. The app's sector labels come from its data provider's own scheme rather than ICB, so the names differ: ICB's Consumer Staples and Consumer Discretionary appear here as Consumer Defensive and Consumer Cyclical. The screener filters by sector, and your dashboard shows how your portfolio splits across them.
An illustrative dividend portfolio. The drift is towards the steady and the high-yielding.
Educational content only. It is not personal financial advice.