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There is no single universal standard, but from an investing standpoint, the consensus vice or so-called “sin” stocks are alcohol, gaming (gambling) and tobacco. These are industries that some may object to investing in due to personal beliefs. Some broader definitions of vice industries include cannabis and defense. Defense companies count as vice for those who are opposed to warfare.

We can construct a universe of vice stocks to invest in using AAII’s Stock Investor Pro. The stock screening and database program contains a field under the Company Information category labeled industry. From it, we chose the sin industries of aerospace and defense, brewers, casinos & gaming, distillers & wineries and tobacco. We also manually screened for cannabis stocks in the pharmaceuticals industry and gun manufacturers in the recreational products industry.

Investors who are focused on the environment and climate change might view profits realized from investing in oil, gas and coal companies to be “dirty” money. From an environmental, social and governance (ESG) standpoint, they can be. But from the traditional view of sin stocks, they’re excluded.

By simply requiring stocks be exchange-listed, have a stock price above $4 and have a market capitalization of at least $30 million, we start to build our universe of vice stocks.

The next step is to narrow this list down to an investable universe. We chose to focus on a growth-oriented strategy. Specifically, we required stocks to have realized higher revenue growth than their industry peers over both the past five years and the past 12 months. This narrows the results to the companies with the highest growth rates within their respective industries. We then require the I/B/E/S consensus forecast among analysts to project annualized earnings per share growth rates of at least 5% for the current year and the next two years. A minimum growth rate of 5% was chosen to ensure that projected growth is in excess of the rate of inflation.

Nearly all of the companies passing the First Cut vice growth screen are in the aerospace and defense industry.

Vice Companies Passing the Growth Screen
(Ranked by Expected EPS Growth for the Current Fiscal Year)

Company	Ticker	Share Price (7/13) ($)	Sales Growth 5 Yr (%)	Indus Sales Growth 5 Yr (%)	Sales Growth 12 Mo (%)	Indus Sales Growth 12 Mo (%)	EPS Est Growth Y0 (%)	EPS Est Growth Y1 (%)	EPS Est Growth Y2 (%)	Industry
Lockheed Martin Corp.	LMT	377.84	10.0	2.1	8.0	(3.3)	26.7	27.9	29.2	Aerospace & Defense
Boston Beer Company Inc.	SAM	940.70	12.6	5.0	46.8	(5.3)	25.2	33.4	44.7	Brewers
Northrop Grumman Corp.	NOC	367.39	9.4	2.1	8.9	(3.3)	24.6	25.6	29.0	Aerospace & Defense
Huntington Ingalls Industries	HII	202.66	5.9	2.1	3.2	(3.3)	13.1	14.7	17.2	Aerospace & Defense
L3Harris Technologies Inc.	LHX	224.58	24.9	2.1	15.1	(3.3)	13.0	14.5	15.9	Aerospace & Defense
General Dynamics Corp.	GD	188.74	3.6	2.1	(0.7)	(3.3)	11.2	12.3	13.4	Aerospace & Defense
Constellation Brands, Inc.	STZ	225.45	5.6	5.0	5.7	(5.3)	10.0	11.7	13.5	Brewers
Elbit Systems Ltd.	ESLT	127.58	8.5	2.1	3.3	(3.3)	7.2	8.2	8.7	Aerospace & Defense
Source: AAII Stock Investor Pro, Refinitiv I/B/E/S and iShares. Data as of 7/13/2021.