The stock market on the whole may be struggling to start 2016, but that's not the case for gun manufacturers. Gun stocks gained 78 percent in 2015, according to USA Today, compared to the S&P 500's drop of 0.7 percent, and shares of the key three gun-maker stocks, Sturm, Ruger; Smith & Wesson and Vista Outdoor gained 11.2 percent so far this year and jumped an average of 7.3 percent on Tuesday alone. The rise in stock prices are of course due to President Barack Obama's proposals to tighten gun rules, which inevitably has caused consumers to rush to load up on guns and ammo before the new restrictions go into effect. Among the big winners of the gun rally? Mutual fund companies Fidelity and Vanguard. "Based on the past multiple years, when gun control becomes a big political topic in the headlines, these stocks do well," Chris Krueger, an analyst at Lake Street Capital Markets, told Reuters.
Moving Beyond the Bank of Patrón
Katie Lewis’s first method of saving money in her 20s? Throwing cash tips into an empty tequila bottle. But at age 28, she hired Priya Malani, a financial planner with New York-based Stash Wealth. The move changed her life, she writes on Refinery29.com. Stash focuses on “High Earners Not Rich Yet,” or H.E.N.R.Y.s, and despite Lewis not being a high earner and having $100,000 in student loan debt, Malani helped her rethink her spending. “It’s hard to admit that, despite being a grown-up, you felt like a little kid when it comes to money. Malani never made me feel stupid,” Lewis writes. Lewis walks the reader through her financial situation and Malani’s corresponding advice, such as using Digit, an app that monitors spending habits, switching to a more lucrative IRA and being more careful with her flexible income. With this happy of a customer, Stash must be doing something right.
Though bitcoin isn’t nearly the media phenomenon it was in 2013, some feel that the digital currency is set to come back in a big way in 2016. Chain, a startup helping companies implement the blockchain technology that powers bitcoin, said its investors like Nasdaq not only see the blockchain as the future of trading, they are bullish on bitcoin as a currency. According to Wired, the first-ever bitcoin credit card introduced by Coinbase in November has already attracted 7,500 customers since it launched in November. Coinbase vice president of business development and strategy Adam White said this growth - the fact that 20 percent of activity on Coinbase is in payments - shows that bitcoin is no longer just for speculation among the Technorati. People are very much using it as a currency.
BOK Financial Acquires Weaver Wealth Management
Fort Worth-based Weaver Wealth Management, part of accounting firm Weaver and Tidwell, has been acquired by Tulsa-based BOK Financial Corp. Weaver Wealth, with $340 million in assets under management, will join The Milestone Group, BOK's Denver-based wealth management division, the Dallas Business Journal reports. Milestone, with $1.8 billion in AUM, was acquired by BOK in 2012. The deal is set to close in the first quarter of the year. Financial terms were not disclosed.