I try to cut myself some slack as an investor, recognizing that I'm going to make mistakes.
I'm starting to feel like a mistake is exactly what I made when I bought a small, fast-growing real estate investment trust (REIT). Although the business is holding up, the growth has stalled. And now I'm thinking that I might be better off shifting the cash into an entirely different sector.
Here's what I'm thinking about doing.
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What I bought and why
I own Realty Income and W.P. Carey, two of the largest net lease REITs you can own. But the vast size of these two landlords limits their ability to grow. In the case of Realty Income, it is so large that slow growth is likely the best I can ever hope for. In an effort to augment growth, I bought a tiny net lease competitor called Alpine Income Property Trust (PINE -0.28%).
Alpine was small and growing quickly. Because it was small and under-followed, it also had an attractive yield and was below peer valuation. I reasoned that this could be an accelerator pedal of sorts for my net lease exposure. I was wrong.
Rising interest rates have made it more difficult for Alpine to grow. And its small size has left it vulnerable to financially weak tenants, some of which were investment-grade tenants not too long ago. The business is still well run and externally managed by a REIT, CTO Realty Trust, that has a long history of operating in the real estate sector.
But the stock market, property market, and interest-rate dynamics have shifted in such a way that Alpine is no longer the growth engine I hoped. Now I'm wondering if I should sell and, instead, buy more of another company I already own.
Should I buy an out-of-favor consumer staples giant?
The stock I'm thinking about buying is General Mills (GIS -0.47%), one of the largest consumer staples companies in the packed food segment. The company isn't doing particularly well right now, with organic sales down 2% year over year in the fiscal fourth quarter of 2025. Moreover, the company offered up conservative guidance for fiscal 2026. Wall Street is worried, and the dividend yield is up to a historically high 4.7%.
That's around the yield level where I bought it originally. However, I'm still up on the investment because of the regular dividend increases that have taken place since I added the stock to my portfolio. In fact, the dividend was increased 2% when the company released fiscal fourth-quarter 2025 earnings. That's a sign that management and the board of directors are confident in the long-term future of the business.
The thing is, I don't really see a reason to be anything but positive about the long term here. Sure, General Mills is facing some near-term headwinds. But that happens to every company, even good ones.
General Mills still remains a well-run and diversified packaged food giant. There's no reason to believe that it won't use the same playbook that it has for decades to muddle through the current headwinds and get back on the growth track in the future.
A more robust investment opportunity
With Alpine, I leaned into growth. But the REIT's small size meant that changing market dynamics upended the growth story. I'm not ready to pull the plug on this investment just yet, but it is very tempting to buy consumer staples company General Mills while Wall Street is downbeat on the stock. History shows that it will likely manage through this period in relative stride, while paying me well to wait for better days.
The key here, however, is that General Mills fits far better with my core investment approach. That could make a switch between these two investments a good choice right now.
