Displaying items by tag: sustainability

(New York)

Which stocks dominated the 2010s? It is an easy question, not a trick—tech stocks. The FAANGs absolutely ruled in the past decade, but such patterns rarely continue and the best stocks in the next 10 years might be very different. Instead, UBS recommends stocks that focus on sustainable investing, genetic therapies, digital transformation, and alleviating water scarcity. The world and its governments and investors are likely to move towards sustainable tech in the next decade, which should support this nascent space, says UBS. Meanwhile technologies like 5G and gene-based therapeutics will revolutionize the technology and healthcare sectors. The world also has a significant supply and demand issue in water (mismatches between where water is and where it is needed), which will create significant revenue opportunities.

FINSUM: This is quite a progressive view, especially in respect to the water and sustainability forecasts. That said, it does seem like a good thesis.

(New York)

One of the biggest problems in the ESG/Sustainable investing space is finding out whether specific companies actually fall within the scope of such considerations. The space is becoming slowly more transparent, but sorting good from bad companies is still one of the major search and cost challenges of investing in the area. Well today we have more info on a new screening tool, called As You Sow, which helps investors sort good from bad companies and find companies and funds which match their desires. The new tool allows you to screen for certain characteristics: “deforestation free funds”, “gun free funds” etc.

FINSUM: Every advisor has clients for whom ESG is an important consideration (especially those with clients trending younger) and this is quite a helpful (and free) tool.

(San Francisco)

Barron’s has just put out a very timely list. The publication has compiled a list which ranks the 100 top companies according to sustainability. Sustainability, which is a component of and often linked to ESG, has become an increasingly important component of returns, so Barron’s rankings will likely make a difference to portfolios. The top ranked firm is Best Buy, followed by Cisco, Agilent Technologies, Texas Instruments, Voya Financial, and Clorox. The top 25 also includes Salesforce, Cummins, and Kellogg.

FINSUM: ESG is an increasingly important area not only for returns, but also for clients, so this is quite a handy list for what can be a surprisingly difficult to handle issue (i.e. deciding which companies are sustainable and not).

(New York)

Many advisors still dismiss green investment, and do so for a number of reasons. Some of these include the asset class as having lower returns, or just being a “niche” interest that is too small of a market. While the perception on returns has already been readily proven to be a fallacy, there is another area where green investment could help clients—in a downturn. Recent evidence from the US downturn showed that green funds tended to perform much better than the market overall during the selloff, suggesting that the underlying securities are more resistant to losses than their conventional share counterparts.

FINSUM: This is hardly a mountain of evidence, but it is certainly suggestive of a potential benefit for green shares.