3 Stocks to Buy and Hold Even if There's a Stock Market Sell-Off in the Second Half of 2026

When the market gets jittery, the reflex is to hide in cash and wait it out. I'm tempted to do this. Money is tight, and I often let fear determine what I'm buying and where. But the smarter question I should be asking is which businesses keep ringing the register no matter what the economy or the S&P 500 does on a given Tuesday.

The three companies below share one trait: Their customers show up whether stocks are climbing or sliding. None of them is that popular, but each is expanding while everyone else stares at the news.

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A lender that gets busier when money gets tight

EZCORP (NASDAQ: EZPW) runs pawn shops, a corner of finance most investors overlook. The model is simple: A customer hands over a watch, a guitar, or a piece of jewelry and walks out with a short-term loan. Here's why that matters in a downturn. When household budgets tighten and a bank loan isn't an option, more people turn to a pawn shop for quick cash. It's one of the rare businesses where a weaker economy can actually mean stronger demand.

What I find more interesting than the loan book is how aggressively the company is widening its reach. Early in 2026, the company took control of Founders One, a 105-store chain operating across a dozen countries, pushing its footprint to roughly 1,500 stores in 16 countries. It also rolled out an online car title loan platform in Texas, extending the same need-cash-now service to vehicle owners.

Look at the chart, too. This ticker has climbed roughly 150% over the past year, and a big chunk of that run is tied to gold. With prices touching record highs north of $5,000 an ounce earlier in 2026, the jewelry customers pawn or sell is worth far more, and the metal that the company melts down and resells as scrap carries a much fatter margin. Management has said as much: Its scrap margin jumped from about 22% to 38% year over year, and the company has flagged that those margins should normalize if gold simply stops climbing.

In plain terms, a stock this strong has been riding a tailwind that may not last, so a buyer today is partly betting on where gold goes next, not just on how many pawn loans get written. That's a different risk than the steady, recession-proof story the headline suggests.

A business that never goes out of style

Carriage Services (NYSE: CSV) owns funeral homes and cemeteries, and demand here doesn't track the economy at all. It's about as non-cyclical as a business gets, which is exactly the point for a sell-off portfolio. After a stretch spent paying down debt, the company has restarted its growth engine.

In May, it entered the Knoxville market with a funeral home acquisition and secured a new $60 million credit facility to fund additional deals.

The catch with this ticker is the balance sheet. Carriage still carries meaningful debt, and acquisitions only pay off if they're integrated well. This is a steady-demand story, not a debt-free fortress, so the leverage is the main thing to watch.

The two-century-old utility hiding in plain sight

York Water (NASDAQ: YORW) has paid a dividend every year since 1816, the longest record of any U.S. company. People pay the water bill before almost anything else, which makes the revenue about as recession-proof as it comes. The company recently raised roughly $48 million in a stock offering to fund its capital program and tuck-in acquisitions of small municipal water and wastewater systems across Pennsylvania.

The trade-off: As a regulated utility, its returns are capped by state regulators, and issuing new stock dilutes existing holders. Utilities are also sensitive to interest rates, so a high-rate stretch can weigh on the shares.

Remember, none of these tickers are popular or get-rich-quick names, and a sell-off could still drag all three lower in the short term. But owning businesses whose customers keep coming regardless of the headlines is one way to stay invested when others are heading for the exits.

I'd treat EZCORP, Carriage Services, and York Water as hold-through-the-storm candidates rather than quick trades.

Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.