My refined methodology

I’ve already set out my view, but I’m done giving funds the benefit of the doubt, now in 2020, funds which profess to be ethical should be ethical otherwise it’s a waste of everybody’s time. For exmaple, fuck these guys: Premier / Rathbone / Unicorn

Negative screening is clearly not enough. I require positive screening PLUS affinity with some if not all of my interests, which are as follows:

• Is the fund/project local?
• Does the project support the type of things I am interested in (renewable energy, community projects, social change)
• Does the project have at least an engagement with sustainability in the sense of both talking about it in the prospectus AND doing something tangible
• Is it transparent? Can I easily find out the information I want to look at to confirm the other factors?

What this means going forwards is that I will be a lot faster to call the bullshit…

My methodology is to scan the investors documents for ethical criteria, then to measure them against mine. I then check the top10 companies, which is illuminating. If less than 5 are ethical BY MY STANDARDS, I will give a negative verdict. If it’s positive, i will carry on with a context based investigation.