Hello there. My portfolio is currently focused on yield but I would like to make this more defensive in the light of how the World looks today. One option I have considered is selling the lot and just investing in something like the Troy Trojan fund. If you don't know this, it's essentially gold, indexed linked bonds and some of the more obvious shares, like £BAT.

So that is one option but I do enjoy researching I ndividual shares myself and have been trying to find picks that would survive a serious downturn. This is not as easy as I first thought, especially as I don't want to invest in tobacco companies and already hold the likes of GlaxoSmithKline (LON:GSK) and £NG for their yields. Then there are the well known consumer defensive brands but these are ridiculously overvalued in my eyes right now, presumably because others are trying to do the same. So I guess I wanted to do the same but with smaller companies that are less likely to have been snapped up for this purpose already. Of course, smaller is always more risky but I want small and rather unexciting!

I've tried a few approaches with Stockopedia, including looking at low or negative betas but without much systematic success. I have found some individual shares that I believe fit what I am looking for, such as Manx Telecom (LON:MANX) and Jersey Electricity (LON:JEL). These still have good yields and have moats as I see them ... literally as both involve affluent islands! I was wondering if anyone had either a screen that would find more such companies or indeed any individual share suggestions that I could manually check out?

Any thoughts much appreciated!

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