Is It Time To Sell My Soul And Buy Lockheed?

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s not a good time to be invested in the market. Every morning I wake up ready to start the next 10-year bull run and every morning, like a Los Angeles Lakers fan without HBO, I am sadly disappointed. Worse than losing my hair or adding a mid-life paunch, a full blown recession will not be fun at my age. After all, just a few months ago I was rich and famous planning vacations, picking out new Teslas and thinking about retiring in Palm Springs. Now I’m left wondering whether the recent Netflix price hike to $15.49/month is a little too rich for my blood.

The downturn has me scouring my stock screen for good investments. Yes, it could very well make perfect sense to double down and buy some of my favorite tech stocks at bargain prices. WWCWD? (What would Cathie Wood do?) She recently doubled down on Tesla, Shopify, Coinbase, Zoom and others. I bought a few shares of Shopify today because I refuse to believe the company, now trading at a reasonable multiple, won’t continue to grow for years to come.

But the one stock that caught my eye was the one I’ve avoided for years. Lockheed Martin. Amidst a sea of red on my screen, there was little ol’ Lockheed, up 2.31% today and nearly 35% for the year. And they pay a dividend of 2.5%!! Sure they manufacture missiles that kill innocent people but they also build missile defense systems that shoot down missiles that kill innocent people.

War is good for Lockheed Martin. But who wants to profit off war? I never invested in Lockheed because I didn’t want to support a company that contributes to the general destruction of humankind. And for the most part, I still feel that way. There are plenty of good companies out there that make money that don’t contribute to the destruction of the planet and the unnecessary death of my fellow human beings. But what happens when none of those good companies are doing well because war is dragging us all down?

For example, I looked at Allbirds this morning. Allbirds is a New Zealand-American shoe company that sells footwear made from New Zealand superfine Merino wool. I’ve purchased a few pair of their shoes. They’re super comfortable. The only problem is Allbirds is still losing money and may never reach profitability. They are eco-friendly though.

My question is this: If I buy shares of Lockheed — because I’m pretty sure there’s no way to lose money investing in a company that profits off the military-industrial complex — can I offset that purchase buying shares of Allbirds? Do I need to buy two shares of Allbirds for every share of Lockheed to get into heaven?

I logged into my brokerage account today. I typed in the symbol LMT. I stared at the chart with the little green line that’s gone up and up and up since the company went public in 1985. I pictured fat white men on beaches, smoking cigars, drinking good rum, laughing with other long-term Lockeed investors at the fact that Lockeed still only sells for 20x earnings when few things are as certain in life as death and war. I thought long and hard about it but ultimately decided I don’t need the extra money that badly. Bad puns aside, I still can’t pull the trigger.