Your shopping list: Granny Smith and Apple stock

Gift cards are the perfect present. It's the gift of choice and it's more thoughtful than cash. You can now buy gift cards for stocks. Blackhawk the largest distributor of gift cards (supplies the gift rack cards at the end of the aisle at your local Woolworths) has teamed up with Stockpile (the broker dealer) making available a gift card that can be redeemed online for stock.

Your shopping list: Granny Smith and Apple stock
The cards will cost $4.95 for a $25 gift card with 20 popular companies like Apple, Tesla, Facebook and Berkshire Hathaway. Given the high share price of these stocks owners will likely have exposure to a fraction of the share.

Blackhawk found that 73% of millennials do not own stock but they would if it was as easy as buying a gift card. Blackhawk has nearly 200,000 locations but to start the stock gifts will be available at a limited number of stores including Kmart and Safeway in the US.

Stock Christmas list
Last year the average shopper spent $166 on gift cards up 23% (source packaged facts 2014). Blackhawk's most popular gift card is Apple's iTunes around 12.5% of their sales. It will be interesting to see which stock will be the most gifted this Christmas. Instead of a Tesla car you might get $25 of Tesla stock or even worse a coal stock! We all better be good for Christmas.....

Jason

http://www.decisiveassetmanagement.com/

Decisive has a long position in Blackhawk (HAWK).The material in this article is for informational purposes only and in no way constitutes a solicitation of business or investment advice. The material has been prepared without regard to any client's or other person's investment objectives. Before making an investment decision you should consider the assistance of a financial adviser and whether any investment or service is appropriate in light of your particular investment needs.