Investing for current income (aka dividend investing), a style of investing that has gone the way of the dodo due to shifting investor and business appetite to reinvesting into growth runways (and eliminating any dividend), is one that is dangerous at first blush.
It’s easy to oversimplify by looking at the yield of a security and get tunnel vision that the yield will continue into perpetuity. Want to make more money? One’s eyes immediately go to the highest yielding securities, albeit the ones that are largely the most junky securities on the market.
Cigarettes have been a yield stalwart for decades. There is no shortage of total return charts, articles, and more about how cigs have been one of the better performing stocks for decades because they consistently raise price more than the drop in cigs sold, and buy back stock that trades relatively cheaply. Investors most often look backward to predict the future rather than ignoring the past and thinking solely about the future.
Enter Phillip Morris (now called Altria), which was annihilated over the past week as the government indicated it was going to reduce the nicotine content in cigs and ban certain vape instruments:
Life comes at you fast:
While I have no opinion on the future of cigarette companies, I think it’s a good example of a company that people buy for yield ignoring the future outlook and risks. I often find that it makes sense to buy companies that yield much less, but have far better future outlooks. To each their own.