A Smoking Stock

It happens to almost all investors, and most of the time not due to any lack of due dilligence—sometimes you just miss something. Take tobacco stocks, which despite all of the efforts of the government and other groups to shutter the doors of the "evil" tobacco companies, has been unsuccessful. The stocks have burned through all of the hurdles, and have soared.

If you owned just Altria, for example, one of the best performing of all tobacco stocks, in the last 30 years or so your investment would have grown over 15,000%, or roughly 500% a year on average. That's a return any investor could certainly be happy about since most investors are used to around 10% being a fair annual return on their money.

Hindsight is always 20/20, of course. You can't get mad when you miss something, although you can be disappointed. I am disappointed. Partly because I did own this stock at least twice earlier on and took profits early on as well. But at least I can marvel at the remarkable money that can be made from time to time through investing. There were Altrias before Altria, and there will be Altrias after Altria.

Look at IBM's heyday. Or how about Microsoft or Google? Hell, even Berkshire Hathaway.

Am I saying that Altria is a company to buy now? Certainly not. All of the indicators seem to suggest that the course has been run, and Altria has really become a value play. Some might even argue calling it that might be overly optimistic as some are predicting a decline in the tobacco industry.

The point here is that there are smoking stocks all over the place, and they have come many times in the history of the stock market. You cannot predict who will be the next big winner. But just knowing that it is possible to latch onto one, even if it just a stroke of pure luck? That makes any play in the markets interesting, and even enticing.