Smith & Wesson’s earnings report gave renewed momentum to a rally in gun-making stocks, which began amid a debate about firearms that followed the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting 15 months ago. As Bloomberg notes, many gun enthusiasts have stocked up on weapons to avoid potential restrictions in response to the Sandy Hook incident, the second-deadliest mass killing at a school in U.S. history, and that has driven stocks like Sturm Ruger to handily outperform even the highest of high-beta momo indices like the Russell 2000. SWHC was up 16% after earnings - its biggest gain since the shooting - as it beat expectations once again.
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"The market should continue to be supported” as new gun owners purchase additional firearms, Ronald Bookbinder, a New Orleans-based analyst at Benchmark Co., wrote yesterday.
Chart: Bloomberg