Has Big Tobacco finally run out of puff?

After a fantastic run spanning decades, tobacco stocks look like they’re starting to fall. John Stepek looks at Big Tobacco’s decline and asks: is it still worth investing in?

180423-tobacco

Phillip Morris shares fell by up to 18%
(Image credit: © 2018 Bloomberg Finance LP)

On Thursday, US tobacco giant Philip Morris International saw its shares plunge by as much as 18% at one point.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.