Giving stock investing advice has been no easy task in March.  Investors got a shock after popular uprisings in the Arab world and the earthquake in Japan.  Add to this the lingering European sovereign debt crisis, soaring energy prices and a housing market that appears to be in the early stages of a double dip, and it is not surprising that investors are apprehensive and investing advice is hard to pin down.

After two solid years of gains, many global stock markets are flat or down for 2011.  The question on every investor’s mind at the moment is “What happens next?”

Unfortunately, this is the wrong question to be asking.  As Benjamin Graham, the mentor of Warren Buffett and the father of the investment profession, eloquently wrote, “Forecasting security prices is not properly a part of security analysis.”

The question you should be asking are “At current prices, can I expect a reasonable return?” and “Is the risk I’m taking proportional to the return I hope to achieve?” You cannot control whether the economy dips into recession or not.  But you can control what price you pay for your investments.

Investors with this perspective can keep their emotions in check and avoid selling at the wrong times – and buy at the right ones.  This strategy can minimize mistakes and allow investors to successfully take the other side of trade when others are panicking.

With this in mind, what investments look attractive in this environment?

Utility ETF

Few sectors got hit as hard as the normally-boring utilities sector.  The Utilities Select Sector SPDR (NYSE: XLU)—generally one of the most conservative sector ETFs—fell by 7% in a matter of days on investor fears that Japan’s nuclear crisis would result in America’s nuclear power providers coming under greater regulatory scrutiny.  But does this make sense?  Most American utilities have little exposure to nuclear energy, and it is difficult to argue that those that do are somehow more at risk due to an earthquake half a world away.  At a time of high energy prices, what politician would want to do anything that would further crimp supply and cause prices to go even higher?

Utilities would seem like an attractive investment at current prices.  The sector trades at a P/E of 12 and pays a solid, safe, and growing dividend yield of 4%.

Should the bull market resume, the utilities sector should participate in the rally.  But if we drift back into recession, investors can still enjoy a yield that is higher than what they can get in much of the bond market while waiting for prices to recover.  XLU is a buy.

Telecom ETF

The global telecom industry also looks attractive at current prices.  Fixed-line telephony might be in slow decline in America and Europe, but the mobile market still has years of growth due to subscribers upgrading to smart phones with data plans.   And in many emerging markets in which American and European firms operate, both fixed-line and mobile telephony are still in the growth phase.

Consider picking up shares of the iShares S&P Global Telecommunications ETF (NYSE: IXP). The IXP exchange traded fund is a collection of global telecom heavyweights like AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and Telefonica (NYSE: TEF).  Like XLU, this ETF trades at a rock-bottom 12 times earnings and yields a healthy 4% in dividends—again, more than you can expect to get from a 10-year Treasury note.  Whichever way the economy goes, IXP would seem like a reasonable place to park a portion of your investment capital.

Healthcare ETF

Finally, investors should take a long, hard look at the Big Pharma sector.  Investors currently have no love for the large-cap health care sector.  Health care was the worst-performing sector in 2010 and after financials, the worst-performing sector of the past five years.   Not surprisingly, it is also one of the least-recommended sectors by Wall Street strategists as reported by Barron’s.

Bearishness towards this sector stems from patent expirations, lingering fears over ObamaCare, and investor disenchantment with the performance of the sector in recent years.  The result is that Big Pharma has essentially been left for dead.  The iShares Dow Jones US Healthcare (NYSE: IYH) trades at a P/E of only 13—a level that more than compensates investors for the risks facing the sector.   At current prices it is difficult to see IYH having much in the way of downside, recession or not.

Without a crystal ball, we have no way of knowing what tomorrow might bring.   Certainly, the Japanese victims of the earthquake and tsunami had no way to know that their lives were about to be turned upside down.

But by buying your investments right, you give yourself that all-important margin of safety, and you don’t have to know what the future holds.

Charles Lewis Sizemore, CFA is the editor of the Sizemore Investment Letter (www.sizemoreletter.com), and the chief investment officer of Sizemore Capital Management.