Gyroscopic Investing

Any long time holder of tobacco stocks here?

I am looking at LO, MO, and PM. I haven't done very much research but I am attracted to the heavy regulation (hard for new entrants to establish a brand) and the very high ROI of the firms. I also think there is a stigma associated with holding the equities which might make them perpetually under-priced. Litigation and secular trends away from smoking are the main risks that I am seeing.

LO looks the cheapest to me, probably because of fears about menthol cigarettes being banned in the future so the low P/E might be justified.

For what it's worth, if you recall that I had created my own stock index of around 30 individual securities to replace the TSM/SP500 for my PP, I overweighted tobacco stocks.

I had both PM and LO and still like both, however I decided to stop using individual stocks and go back to indexing for reasons I described earlier.

If I were to do it again, I think 2 to 3 of my 30 stocks would be tobacco stocks.

MO would be my choice.