Ethical Investing
We apply ethical standards to the things in which we invest.
- We screen out bad guys.
- We favor good guys.
- We vote.
- We are very big fans of community investment.
Most people would call what we do “Socially Responsible Investing”. We’re not calling it that any more. We are aiming for a higher ethical standard for corporate behavior; a more thoughtful and strategic alignment of stakeholders; and a world that truly prospers economically.
We firmly acknowledge the shortfalls of Socially Responsible Investing as it is known. It suffers from greenwashing and often results in portfolios we at Social Thread do not consider ethical. We aspire to something more authentic. Our approach to incorporating ethical issues begins with systems thinking. We aim to understand the complex interrelationships between capital markets and our client’s quality of life. We then extend the scope of our concern beyond the client to the system in which our clients live. We aim to deprive those who do us harm of our capital, cash flows, and attention. We instead dedicate those resources to those we trust and care about. Such securities are few and far between. Our job is to find them and own them.
In order to move beyond socially responsible investing we must understand it. For that we have the following slide show.
Paul Hawken’s excellence criticism of SRI. A must read.
Coro Strandberg superbly describes two diverging paths for SRI: Main Stream and Deep Green.
Clarence Dillon
Catherine Austin Fitts’ ultimate Wall Street crime thriller (and it’s non-fiction).
