Among the sectors containing the best defensive stocks, are utilities, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods.

The utility sector has enjoyed a fantastic economic backdrop. These companies borrow heavily against their assets so the record low borrowing costs while steady inflation increases bills has led to record profits. Water utilities Severn Trent and United Utilities, both have steady income and dividends.

Shares in the water sector are driven on a five-year regulatory cycle. The water sector regulator Ofwat is currently in negotiations to agree the prices from April 2015 to 2020. There is still disagreement between the two parties and this creates risk for shareholders. The regulator could make the industry much less profitable by forcing it to cut prices. The final decision will come on December 12, so, if you are thinking about investing in UK water utilities, it could be a good idea to wait until after that.

SSE, National Grid and British Gas owner Centrica make up the power sector options. Shares here have been hit by political wrangling over the household energy bills, but they remain steady dividend payers for now.

The tobacco companies may be facing slowing sales in developed economies but this is being offset by price rises that the addicted customer base keep paying. The income and dividends are stable for the time being.

The pharmaceutical sector is undergoing something of a renaissance, with new drug discoveries and takeover activity all boosting the shares.

The consumer goods giants Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser have been hit by slowing sales in emerging markets. However, the shares of both companies have easily outperformed the wider FTSE 100 as people will still buy toothpaste, washing powder and washing up liquid even through a recession.

Long term investors would do well to make sure they have a balanced portfolio including some defensive options.

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FTSE defensive shares for a market downturn

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At her home in the Clintonville neighborhood, Faith Durands desk is covered in a pile of papers, books and FedEx mailers.

Dirty dishes sit in the kitchen sink, even though they are a bit obscured by the impressive marble countertops.

On a recent afternoon in early October, she has been to two grocery stores in search of fontina cheese for a recipe. Having no luck, she has settled on Swiss instead.

For Durand, executive editor of the popular food and recipe website The Kitchn, life is much like that of any other workingwoman: Shes busy.

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Editor juggles promoting cookbook, whipping up online recipes

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Installing connected-home lighting is often costly and complicated. A new startup called Avi-On is trying to change this, starting with the seemingly mundane light switch.

Avi-Ons Bluetooth LE-based system consists of a mobile app, a light bulb, and a capacitive-touch light switch. Once installed you can set up lighting schedules, control bulb brightness, reposition a light switch in your home, or add customizable lighting to a previously unlit area. Using mesh networking (the same concept employed by the off-the-grid chatting app Firechat), pieces in the system can talk to one another without needing to be connected to a Wi-Fi network. This makes Avi-On modular and simple to set up: Just sync the hardware to the app in-app, and youre ready to go.

Avi-On is by no means the first to tackle the issue of connected home lighting. Home automation has a long history, but its typically rooted in complication: the need to hardwire your home, add control panels into the walls, or set up some wireless hub that all the devices talk to. This was usually only feasible if you owned your home, and had a handful of benjamins to spare. The Phillips Hue lights are perhaps the closest thing to what Avi-On is doing, but because it uses the ZigBee standard, its system requires a wireless hub to link everything together. By relying on Bluetooth LE, Avi-On doesnt require you to thread wires through your walls, and that wireless hub is just your iOS or Android phone.

The key here is also how affordable the individual pieces are and how they work together under a single app (something HomeKit should eventually bring some parity to for iOS users), without the need for any extra hardware.

Avi-Ons series of products all cost under $40, and primarily fall in the $25 to $35 range. For starters, these include six GE Bluetooth Smart products (a light dimmer, a light switch, an indoor plug, an indoor dimmable plug, and an outdoor plug), on top of the aforementioned light bulb and switch, which you can mix and match to suit your home lighting needs. You can preorder Avi-Ons suite of connected lighting products starting today. They will go on sale starting in March.

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Startup Makes Smart-Home Lighting as Easy as Screwing in a Lightbulb

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