Gun Stocks Are Muted in Early Trading – The New York Times

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The rise of “socially responsible” investing has also put a spotlight on the gun industry. Major money managers like BlackRock and Vanguard hold gun stocks in many of their funds, mostly index funds that track the entire market or focus on smaller companies — such as gun makers like Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger. Sellers of guns and ammunition, like Walmart, Big 5 and other retailers, are even more common holdings in many broad-based mutual funds, index funds and pension funds.

After the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., in 2018, Jon Hale, the director of sustainability research for the Americas at Sustainalytics, a unit of the investment research firm Morningstar, said that he heard from financial advisers who were “getting all kinds of calls from clients concerned about whether they have guns in their portfolios.” That interest, part of a general rise in attention for investing in funds with environmental, social and governance, or E.S.G., principles, has continued to grow, he said.

There are now many E.S.G.-based alternatives to popular index funds that screen out gun-related stocks with minimal effects on performance or costs, Mr. Hale said. Online tools like Gun Free Funds, run by the nonprofit foundation As You Sow, give information about gun stocks in funds that appear in many investors’ portfolios and retirement accounts.

“School shootings really grab people’s attention” in a way that perhaps other mass shootings don’t, Mr. Hale said. And with the Texas attack coming so soon after the Buffalo shooting, he expects that financial advisers will face another uptick in calls about gun stocks from clients. “Maybe they thought about it before,” he said, “and something like this happens and it reminds them again: I should check my investments.”

Stephen Gandel contributed reporting.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/business/gun-makers-stock.html

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