7 Stocks That Hold Up in a Market Sell-Off
Defensive Stocks Positioned For A Pullback
Oil sits near $85 a barrel. The U.S. just reinstated a naval blockade on Iranian ports near the Strait of Hormuz and struck Iranian targets for a third straight night. Brent posted its biggest one-day jump in six years last week, and the volatility index begins to coil in wait for an even larger move than March 2026. The S&P 500 has already given back ground on the headlines and we’ve seen an even bigger sweep in our favorite small cap plays since our record start to the year up nearly 80% on the HGR index stock picks. That level of volatility isn’t for everyone which is why I created this list. Below are 7 stocks built for this kind of market, spanning staples, healthcare, utilities, energy, materials, and financials. None of them depend on the Strait of Hormuz calming down by next week to earn their keep.
$COST: Costco Wholesale
People cancel vacations before they cancel their Costco membership. That’s the whole thesis. Comparable sales rose 7.4% last quarter, membership fee income climbed 13.6%, and renewal rates sit near 90% across 82 million paid members. Digital comp sales jumped 22.6%, adding an ecommerce growth lever beyond warehouse traffic. Costco shares are up double digits in 2026 while the broader market has chopped sideways, because a bulk grocery and household-goods retailer with a subscription model doesn’t care whether oil is $60 or $85. Shoppers trade down to store brands during a squeeze. They don’t stop buying toilet paper, and they don’t cancel the membership that gets it to them cheap making Costco one of my favorite solid staples if I want to keep cash flow steady.
$JNJ: Johnson & Johnson
Sixty-plus consecutive years of dividend increases put J&J in a small club, and the business behind that streak spans pharmaceuticals and medical devices. A hip replacement doesn’t wait for a ceasefire. A cancer treatment doesn’t get deferred because the Fed is on hold. That’s what makes healthcare demand different from a retailer or an airline. Biology and demographics drive it. Aging populations need more procedures and more prescriptions every year, war or no war, rate cut or no rate cut, and J&J’s device and drug pipeline sits directly in that path.
$NEE: NextEra Energy
Utilities are the classic sell-off hiding spot with the oil shortage being an X-factor and NextEra gives you all that, plus a growth story most utilities can’t match. Electricity is non-negotiable whether the market is up or down, and NextEra pays a reliable dividend for owning that non-negotiable demand. On top of it, data centers are lining up for power: FPL’s request backlog has grown past 20 gigawatts, and NextEra is in advanced talks on more than half of it. The company is also working to restart the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa to serve Google’s data centers, on top of a 33-gigawatt renewables and storage backlog. You get defense and offense in the same ticker.
