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August 27, 2019 at 03:00 PM
The surge of mass shootings in the United States has forced many investors to wonder about what’s in their portfolio. Do they own companies that manufacture or sell guns and ammunition?
“Since Parkland [Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed in a shooting on Feb. 14, 2018], we’ve had more advisors asking about how to find gun stocks in portfolios, because it’s not easy to ferret them out, and look for alternatives,” Jon Hale, global head of sustainable research at Morningstar, told Investment Advisor.
In a recent Morningstar paper, Gun Stocks in Fund Portfolios, Revisited, Hale explained how much gun-stock exposure investors may have through index investing. He dissected small-cap indexes to determine how to “take action to mitigate that exposure or eliminate it altogether.”
For example, today only two public U.S. companies, which would be considered small-cap holdings, manufacture guns, including assault weapons, in the United States. They are American Outdoor Brands (AOBC) and Sturm Ruger (RGR). Chances are, said Hale, those who have investments in U.S. small-cap portfolios have some exposure to these gun manufacturers.
“That’s because about two out of every three dollars invested in the U.S. small-cap stock funds are in indexed portfolios, which own the entire market of small-cap stocks,” he noted. However, investors who get small-cap exposure via actively managed funds are different, and Hale said most likely not exposed to these gun stocks. He noted that of the 500 actively managed funds in the small-blend, small-growth and small-value Morningstar categories, only 24 have positions in AOBC while 32 have exposure in RGR.
Still, advisors should understand and be able to explain to clients that exposure to these companies probably won’t make much of a difference to their portfolio performance. It really is whether or not the investor wants any gun manufacturers in their portfolio.
For example, mutual funds that hold the largest number of shares in these companies have very little exposure. In the iShares Core S&P Small-Cap ETF (IJR), RGR is only 0.3%.
To illustrate any material performance impact, Hale said that the Vanguard Small-Cap Index fund, over a three-year annualized return through July 2019, gained 11.01%. The losses over the period for both AOBC and RGR reduced the funds performance by 0.01% on an annualized basis.
