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Filed under: International markets, Newsletters, Stocks to Buy

This post is one of six articles on beverage-related stocks. Here are five other investment ideas to sip on.

Each month in The Forbes International Investment Report, editor John Christy interviews top global stock managers. Here, Lou Gerken of Gerken Capital Associates eyes a favorite beverage play from Latin America.

Filed under: Coca-Cola (KO), PepsiCo (PEP), Hansen Natural (HANS), Stocks to Buy

Beverage stocks are often considered "defensive" in nature. After all, no matter what troubles beset the economy, people continue to eat and drink.

Granted, a recessionary environment might impact purveyors of expensive champagnes. But our focus here is on everyday canned sodas and moderately-priced beer and wine.

Of course, no report on beverages would be complete without the two giants of the field -- Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) and PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP).

As I scanned the stock charts this week, I didn’t find any suitable low risk/high reward long trade setups. I did find a bunch of short sale candidates, I'm sorry to say for those who are looking to go long for some reason.<!---->

The “trend is your friend”, and long term the trend still looks down to me as many fundamental reasons will attest. And just because prices look cheap now, doesn’t mean it’s time to buy. Those low prices could still go lower, for the opposite reasons as those prices went higher and higher before.