(Houston)

Environmentally, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) investing is getting all of the attention from both news outlets and traders, but some investors think too much attention is being diverted from fossil fuels. They argue that oil is now a sin stock, where many investors stay away because of the nature of the good (e.g. alcohol, defense, gambling, and tobacco). Sin stocks traditionally outpace the market, under the wisdom that they remain perpetual value stocks because socially conscious investors stay away, and oil ETFs are starting to outperform renewable ETFs. In reality, sin stocks don’t get their boost from value but rather higher operating margins, and oil is one of the most competitive with low to negative margins depending on how far upstream the extraction is. While oil is moving out of environmental favor it isn’t quite a sin stock yet because it also lacks the capital intensity that is common to sin stocks.

FINSUM: There are a lot of reasons to be bullish on oil right now, but being sin stock probably isn’t one. Oil can still be a value play even if that’s not how sin stocks make their name.

(Washington)

Speculation is running rampant in the wealth management…see the full story on our partner's site

(New York)

An asset manager at Applied Finance Capital Management told market watch of…see the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site

(New York)

Gold has been a strong but steady incline for most of 2021, but…see the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site

(Washington)

The last couple of months has been very tense for advisors. Not only have discussions around a renewed version of the DOL rule been swirling, but highly significant tax hikes are pending. Biden is planning a huge multi-trillion Dollar increase in spending, which means tax hikes are almost a certainly. And none of them is more worrying than the hike on long-term capital gains taxes, which Biden wants to push up to 43.4% vs 23.8% now. That is scary in itself, but here is the truly worrying part: experts think it will take effect May 27th (next Thursday). This would be simultaneous to his announcement of his full budget.

FINSUM: Evidently Biden doesn’t want to give advisors and accountants time to game plan around his changes, so he wants them to go into effect immediately upon release of the budget (and they could even be retroactive).