Long-term greed

Interesting ... how is it I hadn't heard of Generation? And how is it the author hadn't heard of Julie Gorte (that's Gorte with a t) and firms longer established than Generation also exploring the promise of long-term greed?

-Chap

 

I replied because you seem to be begging for it. I attempted to find out what the global equities invested in, unfortunately they simply refuse to give information to investors, they want you to show that you are a professional before they tell you what they buy. Red flags. If they won't even give you their requirements and performance I would not trust the atlantic to dig through the data.

I did google them, to find a more detailed article. It said the only green energy company they invested in was solar city. It also said that a large chunk of the portfolio is in Apple, which through its chinese contract manufacturer doesn't even follow chinese standards for pollution, and has reprehensible employee work conditions.

Gore is on the board of Apple, which means if you don't think the way you solve the problem of treating employees so badly that they attempt suicide, with suicide nets to make them unsucessful with the suicide as they are with life, and you don't go green by simply moving pollution to anouther country, then I am with you. Full disclosure, I have both Apple and solar city, not because they are green (the first one isn't the second one is) but because I thought they were good investments. If some one produced a phone as good as an iphone and gave employees decent working conditions, and produced less pollution, I'd buy that phone, and sell the aapl stock. Unfortunately samsung has poor working conditions too, and no one else is close. By the way I bought solar city because after buying tsla, I belived musk could run both companies well, not because I thought it was a great business to be in. If you just had aapl and scty you would have drastically outperformed the funds and any fund or etf. I have no idea if the other stocks are green or socially responsible.

My advice is buyer beware of the label just like natural. It can mean anything. If you were heavily weighted in apple and google and solar city (has only been public since 2013) in the last decade you did well. If you don't consider suicide nets and exporting pollution so that it doesn't show up on your ballance sheet socially responsable, and I don't then you need to take out the biggest gainer aapl.

Gore also personally invested in fisker, but I have no idea if his fund did.

I don't consider selling current tv to al jazirra socially responsable. It is a government news source, and although that government claims to be friendly to the US, they have done nice things like make it easy for citizens to fund isis and other terrorist organizations. They also make their money from oil, you know that pays for the terrorism. The guy is filthy rich, I don't think he needed to sell it at a higher price in a completely anti american way. I thought that was dick cheney's job. Maybe they aren't that different.

 

Minor technical detail. Doug reports problems posting a reply (See PriusChat Web problem forum.)

Bob Wilson

 

The main thing that struck me as weird about that Atlantic article was the way it's like reading a paper that has absolutely no related/prior work section. From the article you would think the whole ESG investing idea was some unexplored new frontier being pioneered by Generation just in the last 10 years or so.

I was looking for some more complete, less fund-specific overview of the area ... there is this. (The authoring organization is a consultant to institutional investors ... those managing endowments, retirement arrangements, and so on, with typically long time horizons.)

Some of the funds doing this thing have been around > 40 years (in which case they'd be likely to have begun as SRI funds, evolving toward the ESG idea).

-Chap

 

+1

Right, and without really having there information public, I would not trust the atlantics number. They may have a number of different options and atlantic got the one doing the best.

Over the last decade Technology and heath has done the best. It is also riskier. if you pick any period where the market is up a lot the higher beta stocks will do well. These are higher beta stocks in this catagory that has raised the markets.

We do have a couple of things. If you look out at climate change type funds, they have underformed the market for any long period. I think they have done well in the last 3 years, but that is because oil and natural gas have dropped so much to take down the general funds returns.

If you look at socially conscious funds they have under performed a little. That is because socially conscious funds missed a big winner in apple (not socially consious) and most missed the musk companies.

Tesla and solar city did great and are both climate change and socially conscious. I don't know if they can perform as well in the future as much as they have They are also momentum stocks. Probably the best news letter to screen these (momentum stocks which mainly will not be hurt, or even helped by climate change and are socially responsable, has been motley fool rule breakers. The stocks often do really bad in a bad market, and good in a good market, but newsletters are cheap compared to managed funds.

If you allow companies like apple in, there is not much problem cutting companies with less corporate responsability, but ... that is a low bar. Remove the fossil energy and military contractors from the general market and you should have done well in the last decade or the next one.

 

Rockefeller Fund: Dumping fossil fuels hasn't hurt our investment portfolio - Oct. 26, 2015

Note rockefellor had great timing divesting from fossil fuel. I divested from fossil fuel in individual stocks by ... stop losses, this is also how I sold my solar city. I stopped out of most of my tesla too, but bought leaps. I had biggest profits in tesla, but fairly big in big oil too.

Socially responsable haven't done as well, that is unless you say outsourcing to bad working conditions is ok.

Have an idex, have foreign funds, I do. Odds are some of that money is in fossil fuels, either directly or indirectly building pipelines or investing in railroads or other things that support the fossil economy.

Still if you only had tesla and google and amba and some biotech with social responsability then you killed the market. Valuations are much higher today though.

 

Aapl is not considered socially responsible from the majority of those rating agencies that care. It is held in many funds claiming to be socially responsible, like gore's fund. Aapl peformed very well in the last decade, and now is one of the most widely held stocks. I'm sure it is held by more than 17% of investors as it is included in all the large cap, and tech funds and etfs.

Blackrock did a different cut. They rated companies by either being low fossil fuel and pollution, or reducing fossil fuel can pollution. Those in the list (25% best at reducing, or already bottom 25%) outperformed. This could show that A) fossil intensity or pollution intensity is bad for stock valuations or B) companies that do the best at reducing fossil fuels and pollution also perform well in the market.