The way tobacco stocks have rallied this spring, it would be a nice to own a few shares of a tobacco...
The way tobacco stocks have rallied this spring, it would be a nice to own a few shares of a tobacco sector mutual fund. The stocks of Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds Tobacco Holdings both rose more than 50% from their early 2000 lows through 24 May. If you had an index fund pegged to the Bloomberg US Tobacco Index, which includes those two companies plus smokeless-tobacco maker UST, you would have gained 7.7% on 15 May alone. The total return year-to-date is 33%, while the broad Standard & Poor's 500 Index has lost 4%. Yet there are no tobacco funds among the dozens of specialised single-...
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