How Hurricanes Can Affect Your Stock Portfolio

There are a few industries that can obviously be impacted when hurricanes hit, such as the insurance industry. However, there are many more businesses that could feel the effects -- both positive and negative -- from hurricanes and other natural disasters.

In this Industry Focus: Financials clip, host Jason Moser and Fool.com contributor Matt Frankel, CFP, discuss how Florence and other hurricanes could affect your stock portfolio.

A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on Sept. 17, 2018.

Jason Moser: Insurance is the obvious industry here that comes into play for investors. We want to take a look, also, at some of the businesses that will feel the impact of this storm and future storms on the retail side of things. It's interesting to see the two different sides of the coin here. On the one side, I look at companies like Home Depot and Lowe's, for example, and I can't help but think they will ultimately benefit from a storm like this. Most repair materials are going to come from those stores, and people are going to probably stock up a little bit more in the future to prepare for future storms. On that side, you feel like those businesses tend to do OK.

But on the flip side of that coin, look at restaurants, for example. You think about restaurants, they're not going to ever really be able to recoup those sales. Those are sales that are ultimately lost. You're not going to go to Starbucks the following day and buy an extra coffee because you didn't get one the day before because they were closed. A lot of these restaurants have to really take that into consideration.

How do you feel about that? Is there something you keep an eye on when it comes to retail that you feel like investors ought to keep an eye on here when it comes to these types of storms?

Matt Frankel: It's really tough to say. There aren't very many retailers that are immune. Our local mall was closed for two days this past weekend. That's a pretty wide-ranging impact. One other industry that people don't really think of is real estate investment trusts. I'm a big REIT investor. Public Storage is one that I own, for example. They have a bunch of facilities in Houston, some of which got damaged last year during Hurricane Maria, the one that hit Houston. American Homes 4 Rent is one with a lot of properties in the Carolinas. They could really have some losses if they have excessive damage. Because yes, they carry insurance on their properties. But there's still deductibles, there's still lost revenue, there's other expenses that have to be taken into consideration.

Real estate, retail, and restaurants -- the three R's -- are the are the big ones that can really be adversely affected by these storms.

Moser: Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. I was taking a look at this last week for Motley Fool Money. Growing up in South Carolina, I'm sure you're probably familiar with Bojangles, chicken and biscuits. Everybody likes their chicken spicy.

Frankel: Of course.

Moser: And they've got some good sweet tea, too. But it struck me that Bojangles, about 40% of their stores are located in North Carolina. About 60% of their stores are located in North Carolina and South Carolina. There's a good example of not only a restaurant that is going to feel some pain from this storm, but it's probably going to feel a little bit more pain than a lot of the other bigger concepts out there because they're so concentrated in that one region. So, keep an eye on restaurant and retail when you look at storms like these, to see how they're affected. It goes beyond just the nature of the space. Try to understand where they're located, to understand better the risks involved with investing in them. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Bojangles, perhaps, report some less-than-stellar numbers here for the next couple of quarters. I have to believe they're somewhat affected by the storm.

Frankel: Yeah, and that doesn't even consider what happens after the fact. Say there's damage to some of the restaurants that keeps them from opening for an extended period of time. We don't even know that yet. American Homes 4 Rent, the one I just mentioned, their business model is to buy low investment [...] definitely qualifies. They have a disproportionate number of their properties in the Carolinas, kind of like Bojangles has a disproportionate number of their restaurants. That's another company that you can really see adversely affected by the storm.