Last Thursday, I told you why I thought buying stocks like Coca-Cola made more sense for long-term income investors than holding Treasury bonds or other “safe” choices. And I also mentioned that Warren Buffett clearly agreed with me, since his company is Coke’s largest shareholder.

Interestingly enough, Buffett just released his latest letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders and one of the first things he talked about was investing in companies that will be “prospering a century from now.”

[Editor's note: Again, for full disclosure, Nilus' own family owns shares in Berkshire as part of the …

I recently got a great e-mail response to last week’s column on Coca-Cola.

Here’s some of what it said:

“I am biased, but I stopped drinking Coke. I think part of the problem with Coke and other soft drink companies is that the health conscious community thinks Coke has potential cancer causing caramel coloring (although Coke said it is not validated data) … cancer causing Aspartame in its diet products … and 25 packs of sugar in its regular products. Preservatives and coloring in the drinks made that industry less attractive to me …

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Coca-Cola has been a poor performer so far this year, with the shares down 7.1% from the beginning of 2014 through yesterday.

Predictably, that has gotten all kinds of naysayers out of the woodwork. I’ve seen negative stories come out from Barron’s, Morgan Stanley’s research department, and plenty of other places.

The arguments outline all the company’s current problems … explain why Coke is less attractive than many of its peers … and even suggest that investors would simply be better off selling the stock and holding U.S. Treasury bonds instead.

Now, before I …

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As you probably know, I’ve been a Social Security hawk for many years now — studying the system’s deteriorating financial condition … highlighting ways to use the program as effectively as possible … and warning that substantial changes are certainly going to have to be made by lawmakers in the near future.

That’s why I view new revelations about President Obama’s forthcoming 2015 budget proposal as both a blessing and a curse for the program.

After all, the good news is that it appears President Obama is now backing off the idea of …

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About a month ago, I published my thoughts on how attractive various stock market sectors looked for 2014 … and in that article I said I was “cautiously optimistic on certain healthcare firms, especially big dividend payers like pharmaceutical companies.”

Year to date, through the middle of yesterday’s trading, the healthcare sector HAS continued to reward investors, posting an overall 5.72% gain vs. the broad S&P 500’s minor loss of 0.13%.

So today I want to talk about specific plays that we currently have in place throughout Easy Street Investing’s various paid services …

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