If You Think The Market Will Ever Fall, Buy This

The stock market isn’t going to fall again, at least in this century. The S&P is up 8% this year. It is up 25% in the last year, and 80% over the last five. Some stocks of relatively well-known companies have doubled or better since January 1. Among the most extraordinary is the dying chip company Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), which has risen 263% this year.

And now that the SpaceX IPO has begun to trade, there will be more meat in the water for the individual investor piranha. Anthropic and OpenAI are likely to begin trading later this year and are expected to reach a $1 trillion market cap on their first day of trading, or soon after.

If anyone is frightened at all, there are the big, old dividend payers. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ | JNJ Price Prediction) is on this list. So is Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG). Among them, one dividend stock has also traded sharply high. The stock of tobacco company Altria (NYSE: MO) is up 20% this year. It has a dividend yield of almost 6.2%. It has raised its dividend for 56 consecutive years.

Regardless of these benefits, the company remains a difficult investment for many because of its products. It owns the world’s most popular cigarette brand, Marlboro, which is by far the largest contributor to its revenue.

The plane fact is that the CDC reports that 480,000 Americans die from smoking every year. Worldwide, the figure is above 8 million. It is the largest preventable cause of death globally. Altria is a “sin stock,” which is usually applied to all tobacco and alcohol companies.

In the first quarter of this year, revenue rose 3.2% tp $5.43 billion. Reported diluted EPS more than doubled to $1.30. More than the earnings, investors cheered guidance. “We reaffirm our expectation to deliver 2026 full-year adjusted diluted EPS in a range of $5.56 to $5.72, representing a growth rate of 2.5% to 5.5% from a base of $5.42 in 2025,” the company said

For those who worry about a market sell-off, Altria is an excellent safe harbor, if you can stand what the company does to make money.