ESG

New research shows that positive returns to ESG portfolios from 2018-2020 were attributed to increased demand for “green“ stocks, raising the question of whether that outperformance will be sustained.

Hedge funds eager to prove that short-selling is a legitimate ESG strategy just got some fresh material to back their case.

Madonna was right. That iPhone on which you may be reading this article is far less important to society than the materials – like steel and plastic – that were used to build it.

Google, Facebook and Microsoft Corp. — three of the world’s biggest corporate buyers of clean power — are sounding the alarm that a nearly $4 billion, Warren Buffett-backed renewable-energy project proposed in Iowa isn’t necessarily in the best interest of customers, including them.

Sedans are a rarity and electrics even more so. That’s even as pump prices are surging.

It started with bonds. Now even collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) come in green.

The ESG investment industry may be headed for a reckoning and many companies won’t survive this period of higher interest rates.

It will cost more than the gross domestic product of the entire world to rewire the global economy to run on clean energy.

There are costs to living a virtuous life; It requires going without.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is concerned that retail investors are being duped by “greenwashing.”

They are creations of easy credit, beneficiaries of central bank largesse. And now that the era of unconventional monetary policy is over, they’re facing a challenge like never before.

Our fiscal deficit, as measured by the debt-to-GDP ratio, has grown to levels that could impede growth, as predicted by financial theory and confirmed by empirical evidence. Moreover, new research shows that our burgeoning deficit could increase risk premiums for both stocks and bonds.

The war in Ukraine will pour more gasoline on the already raging inflationary fire, threatening to send the global economy into stagflation. Stagflation is a slowdown of economic activity caused by inflation.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is taking its biggest step yet to stop money managers from misleading investors when they claim their funds are focused on environmental, social or governance issues.

The price of foods, fuels and other essential items are spiraling ever upward as Russia’s war on Ukraine compounds supply-chain woes stemming from the pandemic. Central banks may be in the driving seat when it comes to tackling inflation, but it’s governments that face the fallout and so are compelled to act.

Tesla has grown into a $735 billion company on the back of its breakthrough electric-vehicle engineering. Its own carbon footprint is a small fraction of its peers, and its success in the market has pushed the industry overall away from gas-powered vehicles.

Plan for long-term Inflation that will be fought aggressively by the Fed, higher policy rates, and slower economic growth, according to Raghuram Rajan.

Local-currency debt from developing nations -- which is far more sensitive to a country’s domestic inflationary pressures than dollar denominated equivalents -- has slumped almost 9% this year, the most since at least 2008, according to a Bloomberg index.

Elon Musk has a suggestion for entrepreneurs: Get into lithium mining for juicy margins. It’s a pithy recommendation, but it fails to grasp the complicated challenges for producing more of the metal.

Problems occur when a market shift reduces investment opportunities after a period when investor capital has been scaled up. The current climate portends such a shift.

I don’t care how many PhDs are going to argue against me; direct indexing is Wall Street’s attempt at squeezing more fees out of the America public using advisors as the pawns.

Larry Swedroe and Sam Adams’ new book, Your Essential Guide to Sustainable Investing, resolves the confusion in sustainable investing.

Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and Cathie Wood have spent the past few days on Twitter exchanging ideas about how investing and financial markets work — all in the name of liberating small-fry investors from elite giants that manage and peddle index funds.

The ocean shipping industry, among the world’s biggest polluters, is asking a key regulator to overhaul its emissions directives so that all carriers are working off the same rulebook as they make the expensive changes needed to cut output of harmful carbons.

Dutch power company TenneT Holding BV sold 3.85 billion euros ($4.06 billion) of green debt across four maturities Tuesday, to fund greener electricity grids across Europe. It’s the largest deal for the environmental debt from a company, topping previous efforts from Honda Motor Co. and Engie SA, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The Milken Institute Global Conference continues in Beverly Hills, California, bringing together investors, dealmakers, power brokers and celebrities to discuss markets and megatrends. Academics, sports stars, entrepreneurs and politicians among the thousands coming to the Beverly Hilton for the event, which runs through Wednesday.

The environmental group that authored a key proposal against fossil-fuel financing said pushback from the banks it targeted helped ensure the resolution failed.

The green energy revolution is making greater progress than expected. Solar and wind power have seen exponential cost declines, and electric vehicles seem to be a market winner. That’s all good news, but improving green energy is not the same as addressing climate change. There is good chance that even optimistic projections for green energy will come true — and carbon emissions will continue to increase.

Firms often consider launching multiple niches rather than focusing on just one. Though sometimes successful, this approach can dissipate your marketing efforts. This article offers guidelines to determine whether having multiple niches is for you.

Few corners of the financial universe have been surrounded by as much marketing froth as ESG, which by some estimates represents more than $40 trillion in assets. According to Morningstar, genuine ESG funds held about $2.7 trillion in managed assets at the end of the fourth quarter.

Together, 30 of the biggest asset managers have at least $550 billion invested in oil, gas and coal companies that have expansion plans, and even more alarmingly, they continue to provide “fresh cash to companies that are ignoring climate science,” said Lara Cuvelier, sustainable investment campaigner at Reclaim Finance, a nonprofit which published a scorecard Wednesday grading investment firms on their environmental commitments.

The fastest inflation in decades and the resulting rush by central banks to raise interest rates are stoking recession fears in financial markets -- worries that are being compounded by the impact of aggressive coronavirus lockdowns in China and the war in Ukraine.

At least 20 ESG-focused exchange-traded funds have launched in the U.S. this year through Wednesday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While comparisons are difficult to make because of evolving classifications, that’s roughly double a tally of nine from the same period in 2021, and compares with two in 2020 and just one in 2019.

People tend to associate environmental, social and governance investing with stock-picking, a way to sort through companies based on their ESG practices. But not every investor can be choosy about the companies they own. Big pension, endowment and sovereign wealth funds oversee tens of billions and even trillions of dollars, which means they have to own practically everything.

Easter 2022 arrives this week with its usual egg-hunting and chocolate-bunny traditions, but also with some bitter new realities. Major candy makers such as Hershey Co., Mars Inc. and Nestlé SA need to overhaul their production practices if they want to continue feeding the world’s chocolate habit.

Banks earned record first-quarter fees from arranging green bond deals, while oil, gas and coal companies issued the lowest amount of debt in a decade.

As a solar panel was raised onto the roof of their ­mud-brick home in a Tanzanian village in sight of Mount Kilimanjaro, Akida Saidi and his wife felt giddy at the prospect of entering a new era. In a place where most residents make do with pit latrines instead of ­toilets and till their fields of maize and pigeon peas with hoes, suddenly having electricity would catapult them into the 21st century.

The good news is that after months of internal debate, the Securities and Exchange Commission has finally proposed rules mandating that publicly traded corporations address climate change.

Do the investment products that advertise themselves as ESG-compliant actually deliver?

Much of the commentary about the Ukraine war’s implications for the investment-management industry has tended to be both immediate and narrow, particularly in discussions about the spillovers for different segments. By zooming out, however, some longer-term ramifications become more apparent for both public and private markets.