If you were keeping on the up and up, you weren't just worried about that though, you were aware that laws were being made to make it more expensive to smoke. As a careful investor, you might have started coming up with contingency plans, decided a price that you will sell at (if it gets there), etc. Imagine your relief when seeing any news showing that your investment is still a good one. You cannot stop there, you must find out what other news sources are saying about the tobacco industry. You don't just want to check out your how your Philip Morris International Inc. (PM) stock is doing, for example, you might want to check out how the others are doing too, like Altria Group, Inc. (MO).
This brings up another important topic which is diversifying. If you have ever been interested in investing you have heard about the topic of diversification at least in passing. What does it mean to diversify? You don't want to focus on just one stock, you want to invest in several different companies to minimize your risk. Above, both PM and MO stocks were mentioned. They are both big tobacco, but they are two different stocks. Doing something like this is not enough diversification, but it is an example. You don't even need to Google, big tobacco stock, if you look up just one of them, like PM on YAHOO! Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/) you will find that on the right-hand side there are other stock symbols that people who watch PM are watching (http://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PM?ltr=1). The stock MO is one of them. That is not all the information listed, you will also find news related to the stock that you are looking up. In YAHOO! Finance, you can even make a portfolio without spending a cent and see how you do. Technology makes everything much simpler. The key is not to limit yourself. Only a few stocks are mentioned, find out about others and how they are doing in the industry. You might consider a plan for not losing everything whenever the stocks you want to invest in are doing poorly. You might also want to invest in the newest version or fad of a product if you want to add more risk/reward. For example, let's say you have PM and MO already in your portfolio, well, how about considering VAPR (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VAPR/?p=VAPR)? VAPR is a stock for, e-cigarettes, diversification. There are many methods of diversification, some people, for example, keep a certain amount of stock in industries that normally do well no matter what. An example would be a company that sells toilet paper, everyone needs that, so with that logic, you might want some stock in KMP (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/KMB?p=KMB).
With this knowledge, you might be more interested in and start to invest right away. Where can you do that? If you have followed any of the steps above (looking up the stocks for
By: W.J. Loesener