Hello Money, Goodbye Gun Stocks

Against gun violence? Get your money out of gun stocks

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Against gun violence? Get your money out of gun stocks

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Launch tags:Web App•Politics•Fintech

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The more the government wants to take guns away, the more people purchase guns. This cause might create it's own Streisand effect

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10yr ago

Hello Money, Goodbye Gun Stocks

Maker

@stephenmarklevi It's a valid point. In some cases divestment campaigns make the stocks cheaper for other people to scoop them up. In other cases though (like fossil fuel divestment now), an increasingly broader personal and institutional investors are pulling their money out, including some Wall St type investors. So after certain tipping point, divestment is the right thing to do to avoid investment loss. We don't know if gun stocks are there yet. Maybe not. But these efforts add up, and with more technology and design, we can make it easier to vote with their $.

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10yr ago

Why 30 days only? Gun stocks aside, this looks like one of the best fund screeners I’ve seen.

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10yr ago

Hello Money, Goodbye Gun Stocks

Maker

Hi @curiouspaul! Thank you for the compliment. Which part did you find useful? I’ve used it for my own fund selection too. The 30-day expiration is intended to provide a sense of urgency to the participants, bring focused attention to the issue, and get clear insights. We’ve seen (and I’ve personally run) online campaigns that eventually become deserted. By putting an expiration date, we can do a better job directing attention to the topic of gun stock divestment for the timeframe, and analyzing the participation to get actionable insights. As an early stage fintech startup, we’re interested in exploring the topic of “truly personalized socially responsible investing.” An expiration date allows us to support and evaluate this particular offering in a focused manner, so that we can take the lessons and define our next steps.

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10yr ago

@keywonc Makes sense. I have firsthand experience too and agree campaigns are hard to maintain after the first wave of participants. The part I found useful was that I could easily see all funds from one brand or a category, and narrow them down by things like expense ratios. For instance, I was able to see all 12 Technology Sector funds(https://goodbyegunstocks.com/alt...), with expense below 0.5% in one place. I’ve never been able to browse a sea of funds like this.

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10yr ago

Hello Money, Goodbye Gun Stocks

Maker

@curiouspaul There you go, yep it’s pretty cool to see all funds in one place, and be able to slice and dice them in different ways :)

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10yr ago

The State Of JavaScript Survey

Maker

@curiouspaul @keywonc "Sea of funds" -- love it!!

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10yr ago

Would love to hear more about the technology infrastructure needed to make this happen?

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10yr ago

Hello Money, Goodbye Gun Stocks

Maker

@humidorange Good question! I’ll ping my technical partner @mshiman to answer this.

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10yr ago

The State Of JavaScript Survey

Maker

@humidorange It’s a hodgepodge. The stack is built using Meteor (http://meteor.com), though we don’t really use many of its features. The front-end is built using React-Redux (https://github.com/reactjs/react...) and generally works well. The search is done using Elasticsearch (https://www.elastic.co/), and the data processing is done using a fairly crazy pipeline of python, nodejs, and some Meteor. Most of this was developed for our main service, Hello Money (https://hellomoney.co), so Goodbye Gun Stocks is mostly the front-end.

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10yr ago

@mshilman @humidorange Yowza. That sounds like quite a lot sitting behind a pretty simple service. Overengineered?

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10yr ago

The State Of JavaScript Survey

Maker

@notnononech @humidorange Haha, maybe. The top-level architecture works well, and aside from cleanup I wouldn’t do things too differently if I were to rewrite. I’ve got my eye on Apollo (http://www.apollostack.com/), also from the Meteor team, and might give that a try on the next iteration. :)

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10yr ago

Is this for US stocks only? Which stocks are gun-related? Good job!

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10yr ago

Hello Money, Goodbye Gun Stocks

Maker

@sanemavcil Yep, we’re currently able to screen US funds for US stocks. The gun-related stocks in the US are the following: - Gun and ammunition makers: Olin, Ruger, Smith & Wesson, Vista Outdoor - Gun and ammunition retail sellers: Big 5, Cabela’s, Dick’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse, Wal-mart. "Appreneur" is a nice title by the way :) Let me know if you have any other questions.

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10yr ago

Bisou

Great tool. How common is divestment? Are there any other examples of divesting?

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10yr ago

Hello Money, Goodbye Gun Stocks

Maker

@south_erner Ahh yes. I was actually surprised when I looked it up. Leading the trend right now is fossil fuel divestment, where $3.4 trillions of assets have been pledged to divest. Divest/Invest pledge has ballooned 52x in 15 months. http://divestinvest.org/ In the 1970s, almost $350m of investments was withdrawn from South Africa via an international boycott against the Apartheid. Super VC Ron Conway is currently involved in gun stock divestment via Unload Your 401K. In fact you can see his face in this promo video as well:

After the research, I am starting to believe aligning your ethical and financial gains will become the mainstream behavior. I wrote a roundup of the divestment trend on Medium titled "The Faces of Divestment: Ron Conway, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Gore, and Snoop Dogg" -- you might find this entertaining ;) https://medium.com/p/2b14200bd154

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10yr ago

Surprised to see Walmart on the list. Is that true?

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10yr ago

The State Of JavaScript Survey

Maker

@ryan_codropse Unfortunately yes. Wal-Mart is the largest seller of guns in the US. It’s even nicknamed “America’s Gun King.”

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10yr ago

Right on. I worked on Unload Your 401k. Great to see that the divestment movement is growing!!

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10yr ago

Hello Money, Goodbye Gun Stocks

Maker

@charles_baker We are fans of your work. Saw Unload Your 401K, and wanted to expand it beyond 401K. Kudos to you and your team, and thank you for your encouragement!

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10yr ago

The State Of JavaScript Survey

Maker

@charles_baker Thanks for your note. We're inspired by Unload Your 401k and proud to be part of Campaign 2 Unload!

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10yr ago

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