Wall Street's safest stock just had its biggest day since the pandemic crash: Chart of the Day

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. The stock 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.

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

Investors often gauge how expensive a stock is using the price-to-earnings ratio (P/E), which divides the stock price 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 trade 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 sell-off 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.

P&G isn't alone. Kimberly-Clark ( KMB ), the maker of Kleenex and Huggies, and Colgate-Palmolive ( CL ) each gained 4% to 5% on 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 also helping. 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.