3 Safe Stocks to Keep During Tariff Uncertainty

Key Points

• During one of the most volatile weeks in the S&P 500's history, three stocks stand out for their stability in price action driven by fundamentals.
• Moving forward, these names could offer not only additional upside but protection as well during uncertainty.
• Wall Street analysts and institutional buyers agree with this view today.

There’s no hiding the fact that the S&P 500 index has been on a wild ride for the past couple of weeks. Volatility has popped with President Trump's rollout of new trade tariffs on most countries doing business with the United States. Since the stock market reflects future GDP expectations, and tariffs certainly create difficulty in forecasting future GDP, it makes sense to expect further volatility in the coming months and quarters.

That being said, there are still fundamental arguments to be made for safety in the stock market, as long as this safety comes in the form of price action driven by underlying business models. These business models should be focused on predictable and stable cash flows so that investors can have a chance of not only keeping their potential investments safe but also compounding their wealth once the uncertainty is removed from the equation.

This is where today’s list of safe and predictable businesses comes into play, as their business models allow for stability in both the company's valuations and the price action in the underlying stock. Fitting the descriptions laid out in what’s needed under today’s environment, considering T-Mobile US Inc. NASDAQ: TMUS, Spotify Technology NYSE: SPOT, and even Netflix Inc. NASDAQ: NFLX can be a great addition to portfolios today.

A Premium Offer With T-Mobile Stock

There’s always a good reason for the broader stock market to pay a premium for certain stocks, and in the case of T-Mobile, that reason is clear as day. By trading at a price-to-book (P/B) ratio of up to 4.8x today, T-Mobile commands a steep premium to the communication sector’s 1.8x average valuation.

While some value investors may call this expensive and skewed in downside potential, seasoned operators will remind them that this means a broader expectation of outperformance from T-Mobile. Fundamentally, it makes sense, considering users are never usually late paying their phone bills.

Remove Ads

This stability in being a necessary service for the entire American population is a plus, as is the fact that this is a subscription-based business. This adds a layer of predictability in cash flows every single month for management to efficiently manage and redeploy further into compounding value.

Understanding the importance of these predictable and stable cash flows, as well as the fact that T-Mobile has very little downside exposure in terms of tariffs and trade, institutional investors from GAMMA Investing decided to initiate a stake of up to $814.4 million in T-Mobile stock as of April 2024, a clear sign of confidence moving forward.

More Optimism in Spotify During Volatile Markets

Spotify is another business that displays the strong stability and predictability of a subscription-based model. In the days before the trade tariffs announcement, some Wall Street analysts became even more aggressive with their upside forecasts.

In fact, those from Wells Fargo decided to reiterate their Overweight rating on Spotify stock as of late March 2025, this time also placing a valuation target of up to $740 per share. This new view would call for the stock to make a new 52-week high and implies a net upside potential of 34% from where it trades today.

Of course, realizing this target would require more momentum buyers to come into the scene and support the stock, so at this point, it sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that investors could get behind in the coming months and quarters. The bull case for Spotify seems strong and obvious not only to these analysts but also to the same buyers who recognized the T-Mobile opportunity.

As of April 2025, allocators from GAMMA Investing added Spotify to their buying list, placing up to $394.8 million into the company to start the new quarter and another bullish pillar for investors to lean on.

An Undeniable Driver Behind Netflix Stock

Netflix is another service that probably ranks last on the list of expenses to cut during tough economic periods. After all, its users see little to no churn once they become subscribers and streamers. Needless to say, the economic uncertainty does add a bit of extra appeal to having Netflix over a more expensive plan to visit the theatre.

With this in mind, as consumer themes seem to tighten over discretionary spending, Wall Street analysts see up to $6.28 in earnings per share (EPS) for the third quarter of 2025, a significant boost of as much as 49.5% from today’s reported $4.20 in EPS.

As every investor knows, where EPS goes, so does the stock price. In the case of Netflix, which now sits at 86% of its 52-week high level, everyone can see that this subscription business has significantly outperformed the broader S&P 500 index in one of its worst weeks in financial history.