Health-care shares saw the biggest multiple expansion this year, trading at 17.5 times estimated earnings last week, the highest since 2007. A group of consumer-staples stocks trades at 18.6 times estimated earnings, compared with the average of 16.4 before the bull market, according to data since 1990 compiled by Bloomberg. The price-earnings ratio for utilities shares reached 16.1, compared with the 13.8 average before 2009.

“The mantra was bond-like stocks for 18 months, from the middle of 2011 until Bernanke said the word taper,” Eric Green, director of research and fund manager at Penn Capital Management, said by phone Nov. 14. The Philadelphia-based firm oversees about $7 billion. “The uncertainty has forced individual investors and institutions into more defensive types of stocks.”

Value Stocks

Hormel Foods’s valuation climbed 33 percent to 20.3 times estimated earnings in the last 12 months. The multiple for the maker of Spam luncheon meat is 30 percent higher than the mean for the decade before the bull market, according to data on reported earnings compiled by Bloomberg.

CenterPoint Energy, which distributes power to Houston, is up 30 percent in 2013, boosting the price-earnings ratio to 17.2 from 14.1 in January. Before this year the utility provider traded at a 33 percent average discount to the S&P 500 since 1990, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Shares of AmerisourceBergen Corp., the pharmaceutical company that pays a 24-cent dividend, advanced 61 percent this year. The price-earnings ratio for the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based company increased 53 percent to 18.9 in 2013, Bloomberg data show.

Stock Multiples

Those valuations are about the same as stocks with earnings more tied to economic growth. Ralph Lauren, the retailer of its namesake brand clothing, trades at 19.1 times profit projections. Citrix Systems, the Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based software maker, has a multiple of 17.6, and Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed company, trades at 21.1 times earnings. ˜

“Investors are assigning similar values to more stocks despite very different earnings growth profiles,” Brian Belski, chief investment strategist with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note last month. “These trends are not likely to continue.”

The longer a rally goes on, the more valuations adjust to individual companies’ earnings, meaning stocks with lower growth whose multiples have surged this year may see them drop back down, according to Belski.