Investing in gambling, tobacco, alcohol and pornography can pay handsomely.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Cecil Johnson

``Stocking Up on Sin: How to Crush the Market with Vice-Based Investing,'' by Caroline Waxler (John Wiley & Sons, 245 pages, $27.95)

Put your money in slot machines, advises New York-based financial journalist Caroline Waxler in ``Stocking up on Sin,'' a thought-provoking and extraordinarily well-written guide to investing where the odds are in your favor.

Waxler is not suggesting, of course, that there are killings to be made from pouring coins into one-armed bandits and hoping for jackpots. But she is banking upon the near certainty that for many decades to come, millions of people in this country and around the world will continue doing that or the equivalent of it.

So Waxler's advice is to invest in the companies that make the slot machines. That recommendation is based on her finding that casinos are accelerating a conversion from ...