Displaying items by tag: esg

(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.

(New York)

ESG has been on the rise. In its infancy, ESG was largely diminished to a niche sector, but increasingly large amounts of investor capital are flowing based on ESG considerations and clients are getting more and more focused on it. Now there is a new tool to score and rank mutual funds based on ESG factors. The tool is from As You Sow. It is still a work in progress, but is quite useful for getting an idea for where funds rank against one another.

FINSUM: This tool is still in development, but we could imagine that this could become quite useful as ESG is famously hard to grade.

(Seattle)

Microsoft might have a big edge that no one is giving them credit for. That edge? It is the fact that money is pouring into ESG funds, and Microsoft is largely included in that category. Almost all of the top five ESG ETFs are overweight Microsoft, and as ESG continues to draw in more and more capital, that will become an increasingly important advantage for MSFT and other big tech names as well. In fact, many large tech companies are seen as ESG-friendly, so this is a hidden tailwind for several companies, including Google.

FINSUM: ESG ETFs are only going to grow in strength, so this is a nice little bit of momentum that will be pushing tech names higher.

(New York)

If you asked almost anyone in the industry, the answer would be the same: it is Millennials with whom ESG investing is very popular, “we just can’t get older generations to care”. However, that is not exactly true. While Millennials get most of the credit for caring about socially-conscious investments, it is actually the generation above them, Gen X, which is doing the most ESG investing. A big part of this fact is down to the reality that Gen X is still richer than the younger Millennials. Millennials still win in terms of the overall percentage who buy ESG investments, but Gen X is seeing assets in ESG funds surge quickly. Gen X consists of anyone aged 39-54 years old.

FINSUM: This is a pretty interesting statistic and one that could be useful to some advisors who might be nervous to propose ESG options to those 50+. That said, the desire for ESG investing often comes from the client.

(New York)

Walmart did something a lot of conservatives may not like this week—they announced that they would stop selling ammunition for assault weapons. Despite the political turbulence it may cause for the company, it could have a bullish effect on the stock in the long run. The reason why might not be obvious at first glance, but immediately becomes so once you hear it—the ban on assault weapons ammunition will give the company a higher ESG score, which means it may be included in more funds by default, and thus see increased buying.

FINSUM: Whatever your politics on this move, from an investment perspective this could be bullish.