It’s so good to be bad—at least when it comes to investing. Vice stocks are a corner of the market where many investors—and particularly professionals—are afraid to venture.  But this reluctance by many investors to embrace vice stocks is precisely what makes them such profitable investments (see “The Price of Sin”).  Because professional investors like...Read More

If you are a Baby Boomer and looking forward to retirement, you might want to sit down with a pencil and a notepad.  Retirement is a lot more complicated than it used to be, and not just because retirees in the post-pension era are having to take more responsibility for their investment allocations. The investing...Read More

It’s getting harder to find bargains in the stock market these days.  American stocks aren’t expensive, per se, but they’re not exactly a bargain either. The S&P 500 trades for 17 times earnings, which is slightly above the long-term average.  If you’re aggressively buying U.S. stocks at these levels, you’re either expecting earnings growth to...Read More

The US Food and Drug Administration announces it is considering banning or strictly regulating menthol cigarettes…and the share prices of the companies that make and sell those menthol cigarettes take a tumble.  Haven’t we seen this movie before? Midday Tuesday, the share prices of Altria ($MO), Reynolds American ($RAI) and Lorillard ($LO) were down by...Read More

Last month, I wrote that Australia’s plain-packaging law was one of the worst setbacks for Big Tobacco in decades because it attacked the companies’ single most valuable asset: their brands. Big Tobacco has strong enough moats to survive high taxes, punishing lawsuits, and an aging and declining customer base intact.  But plain packaging threatens the...Read More