filmuncher My investments

Looking around for new options …

And might as well sling ’em in here for now. So I have two things to research, I have some money to invest and some tax-free investments to reinvest

I of course want to max out my 20,000 allowance on an IFISA, the options I have are to use Abundance, Energise Africa or Triodos. Annoyingly you have to pick only one option for eveyr tax year, you can’t split the allowance. And right now options are limited, although there’ll be some more offers along soon… Normally they are around 5-7% which is not too shabby.

Otherwise I am searching for options, on platforms such as Ethex, Energy4All and Triodos (they have a sterling bond out later this month).

To check:

2

Tax-free investments:

“Ethical” keyword search gives the following hits on my investment platform (filtered for accumulation) … we’ll see just how ethical they are…

Aegon Ethical Cautious Managed (Class B) Accumulation – MEH

Aegon Ethical Equity (Class B) Accumulation – MEH

AXA IM Ethical Distribution (Class Z) Accumulation

Legal & General Ethical (Class I) Accumulation – MEH

Liontrust UK Ethical (Class 2) Accumulation

Premier Ethical (Class C) Accumulation NOPE, review here

Quilter Ethical (R Class) Accumulation – MEH

Rathbone Ethical Bond (Class I) Accumulation – NOPE, review here

Royal London Ethical Bond (Class M) Accumulation – NOPE,

Troy Trojan Ethical Income (Class X) Accumulation NOPE, review here
Unicorn UK Ethical Income Accumulation – NOPE, review here

Hmmm reviewing the shitness that is Premier, Rathbone and Unicorn makes me dispirited, but this article gives me hope and mentions Liontrust, Trojan and Royal London so I’ll carry on …

Trojan is awful!

Also need to revisit Jupiter Responsible, now done, still need to disinvest

stolinski Fund Review

Fund Review – Rathbone Ethical Bond Fund

(Review from 2019 plus usual disclaimers apply)

The Rathbone Ethical Bond Fund get off to a bad start by promising “Open and transparent ethical criteria and reporting lines” without providing the ethical criteria.

What companies are in its holdings? amongst others, Rabobank NL, Lloyds Bank, Rothschild Finance, HSBC. I actually refuse to believe these holdings are not funding arms manufacturers. So they pass the negative screening but not my hard ethical stance.

Let’s take HSBC for example:
https://waronwant.org/media/bds-victory-hsbc-divests-elbit
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/hsbc-agm-protests-israel-government-arms-companies-investment-war-on-want-a8314396.html
https://theecologist.org/2018/may/21/are-you-funding-fracking-and-nuclear-weapon-manufacturing

Anyway, despite the open and transparent pledge, i can find nothing about their ethical criteria more than a statement about “strict ethical and financial criteria.”

The interim report for the fund goes no further than this, with no mention of screening.
When I emailed them, the quickly replied with a link to the criteria so that was handy. And what are they like? Well a standard negative screening, plus a very vague positive screening. T

To qualify for inclusion in the fund’s universe, issuers should demonstrate progressive or well-developed practice or policies in one of the following key areas:

    • Corporate community investment
    • Employment
    • Human rights

Management of environmental impacts

2020 UPDATE

EMAILED rutm@rathbones.com about requested page “/downloads/fund-related/ethical-screening-criteria-1-2016_3554.pdf” could not be found.

VERDICT= NOPE not good enough

stolinski Fund Review

Fund Review: Kames Ethical Cautious Managed (Class B) (Acc)

[Review from 2019] Disclaimer this is uh just like y’know my opinion maaaan

Kames Ethical Cautious Managed (Class B) (Acc)

This fund is the only “ethical” fund in the Hargreaves & Lansdown Wealth Top 50. I personally don’t really see where the ethical side of things lies.

Having Coca Cola as one of the top 10 holdings is a massive red flag. This is a fizzy sugary drink which uses 3 litres of drinking water to produce 1 litre of product. The company has been invovled in human rights abuses, including the murder of trade union officials in China, Colombia,Guatemala, India and Mexico. Check killercoke for all the information.

Almost 50% of the holdings are bonds, which I doubt are ethical. These are the sort of holdings that come up if you go to page 224 of the 2018 annual report (pdf):
Bank of Scotland, Santander, Rabobank, Sainsbury’s Bank, Transport for London, Esure, Legal & General, AA, Dignity.

Er… So what’s the screening criteria? Well after 20 minutes of googling I was none the wiser except for finding a few references to the ethical criteria being listed elsewhere. I finally found the right link. kames claim “All three ethical funds we manage are designed to meet the needs of clients who wish to make investment decisions based on strong ethical principles. These are often referred to as ‘dark green’ funds, with ethical screening criteria which are clear and unambiguous”
Further, “Our ‘dark green’ screen is ideally suited to investors looking for a more stringent ethical philosophy. It adopts a negative approach that screens companies out of our funds’ potential investment universe if they engage in certain unacceptable activities. Examples of our screening process are shown below.”
Then we have a fairly typical negative screening list. The categories are as follows:

  • Animal welfare
  • Military
  • Nuclear power
  • Environment
  • Political donations
  • Genetic engineering
  • Gambling
  • Alcohol
  • Tobacco
  • Pornography
  • Banks
  • Oppressive regimes

This is not a bad list necessarily, but obviously not very good if it lets through the companies listed above. I prefer positive screening as made by a bank like Triodos, which only invests in projects which it believes are benefitting culture, environment

Simply put though, this is far from a stringent screening. It’s not even dark green. These people are bullshitters.

VERDICT NOPE

2020 update – LOL not much to add, I guess I just ran out of stea,m, it’s quite depressing checking all these funds advertised as ethical and whatnot only to find out they are SHITE