Safety Stocks Are Not What They Used to Be: 4 Names Built for a Weaker Dollar

Safety Stocks Are Not What They Used to Be: 4 Names Built for a Weaker Dollar

Safety Stocks Are Not What They Used to Be: 4 Names Built for a Weaker Dollar Written by Bridget Bennett | Reviewed by Clare Titus September 8, 2026

Key Points Coca-Cola's 64-year dividend growth streak is backed by pricing power rather than habit. Mastercard collects a percentage of every transaction rather than a flat fee, so revenue reprices automatically as costs rise. Wheaton Precious Metals and Canadian National Railway supply two very different moats, uncapped metals exposure and irreplaceable rail infrastructure.

Big tech is rallying again, and the rally is doing an effective job of hiding what sits underneath it. The national debt is climbing toward $40 trillion. The median existing home costs roughly $398,000 against a median household income near $84,000, a ratio that hasn't looked normal in decades. And the headline number on the S&P 500 keeps flattering a market where a small group of megacaps is doing most of the lifting. That gap between what the index says and what the economy feels like is the story investors keep skipping past. Strip out the Magnificent Seven , and the rest of the index tells a much quieter story.

Here's the part that changes the math: if the dollar in your pocket keeps losing ground, the old defensive playbook stops protecting you. Safety used to mean parking money in something slow with a fat yield. That formula assumed a currency that held its value. It no longer does.

The Old Safe-Stock Formula Broke When the Dollar Did Gavin Magor, director of research at Weiss Ratings, argues the definition of "safety" needs rewriting. The old version meant utilities , telecoms and tobacco: companies nobody expected to grow, paying you to accept that. Safety meant sacrifice. The new version looks different. Magor's screen is for businesses with structural pricing power, companies whose economics improve as costs rise around them rather than getting squeezed. His team also publishes ongoing research on the policy forces quietly eroding retirement savings, and it's worth reviewing alongside any defensive positioning .

Four names clear Magor's bar, across four unrelated corners of the market. Coca-Cola Raises Prices Faster Than Its Own Costs Rise Coca-Cola NYSE: KO carries a B+ rating from Weiss. The company has now raised its dividend for 64 consecutive years , through every recession and every rate cycle in living memory. That's not a promise, it's a receipt.

It isn't coasting on the streak either. Second-quarter net revenue rose 7% to $13.38 billion , organic revenue grew 6%, and global unit case volume climbed 5% with every reporting segment contributing. Comparable operating margin expanded to 35.6%. Management lifted full-year guidance in late July.

Magor's point is about mechanics, not brand affection. A penny of price on a global volume base compounds into serious money, and Coca-Cola has spent a century proving customers absorb it. Inflation doesn't threaten that model. It feeds it.

Mastercard Collects a Percentage, Not a Flat Fee Mastercard NYSE: MA earns a B- from Weiss, and its moat is almost embarrassingly simple. It takes a cut of the transaction, and the cut is a percentage. When the number on the receipt goes up, so does the take. No repricing decision required.

That played out in the second quarter: net revenue up 14% to $9.3 billion , adjusted earn...