Avoid International Headaches With These Stocks: Altria Group Inc (MO), Walgreen Company (WAG), The Southern Company (SO)

Utility stocks such as The Southern Company (NYSE:SO) provide electricity for customers based in the southeast United States.  Investors can sit back and enjoy a 4.5% dividend yield without the fear of an unraveling European economy.  The Southern Company (NYSE:SO) has demonstrated a clear pattern of rewarding its shareholders, since the company has raised its dividend for 11 straight years.  Even more impressive, Southern has paid uninterrupted dividends to shareholders every quarter since 1948.  Southern probably isn’t cheap at 16 times trailing twelve month earnings per share, but investors could certainly do worse than a reliable utility with a market-trouncing dividend yield.

The Foolish takeaway

The European debt crisis has reared its ugly head once again.  Along with the stock market’s beating on February 25, the Volatility Index soared more than 30% on the day.  Seen as the market’s ‘fear gauge’, the VIX is a telling indication that the market is far from resting easy about what’s happening across the globe.  However, you don’t need to lose sleep about the seemingly never-ending string of worries coming out of Europe.  It’s certainly possible to insulate your portfolio against international headline risks.  These three stocks generate all their sales within the United States, which certainly isn’t an economy experiencing runaway growth, but is at least measurably better off than the economies in Europe.

The article Avoid International Headaches With These Stocks originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Robert Ciura.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.