CREEDE HINSHAW: Scruples about where you invest and spend

The headline caught my eye: “What’s Behind the Siren Call of Sin Stocks” (Wall Street Journal, Feb. 8, 2016, p. B7). The article’s sub-headline was “Alcohol, tobacco and other ‘vice’ shares do relatively well in a down market.”

Reporter Gerrard Cowan noted that shares of alcohol, tobacco, gambling concerns and firearms, “sin or vice stocks,” tend to do better than shares of other industries.

There is even a fund – the USA Mutuals Barrier Fund with a ticker symbol VICEX whose stock holdings are comprised exclusively of these concerns. The gist of the article suggested that beer drinkers are always going to drink beer, smokers are always going to smoke, governments are never going to stop building and buying weapons and gamblers – even if they waver in dire economic times – will keep rolling the dice. No mention is about the profitability of pornography, though I sadly suspect it is a huge moneymaker, too.

My question today is directed towards those who have funds invested in the stock or bond market. Have you ever spoken to your advisor about what your money supports? Does it matter? Are you comfortable investing in any financial vehicle that offers a fairly predictable, steady return?

The United Methodist Church has historically suggested strict standards for the investment of church money. I don’t believe there are guidelines for how individual Methodists should invest their money, but congregations in the past have been forbidden from investing church money in the funds listed in this article. I think that ban is still in place, though I can’t find the reference in our Book of Discipline.

Many denominations agonize over exactly how far to take such a strategy. Methodism’s pension board recently crafted guidelines that would move the church out of coal industry investments. Some denominations once considered selling all stock in Caterpillar because their bulldozers razed the villages of Palestinians in the West Bank.

One person’s moral principles are to another person’s strategy for wise investing. Even those who avoid the stock market make morality based spending choices. Almost everybody has scruples about where they’ll spend their money.

A friend told me this week that when the Target Corporation declared that their public bathrooms would be open to transgender persons that Target lost billions of dollars. I searched the story on the internet and found dozens of stories, most from very conservative websites, reporting that over 1 million persons signed an American Family Association petition opposing Target. These sites claim that the bathroom issue caused Target’s stock to lose $1.5 billion. I doubt that the cause and effect is quite that simple. A similar Disney boycott a few years ago didn’t dent Disney in the least.

My friend said he wouldn’t shop there anymore. I’m sure others agree with him. Then he and I admitted that neither of us do much of the shopping in our houses anyway.

Email columnist Creede Hinshaw, a retired Methodist minister from macon, at hinnie@cox. net.