cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33213155
I don’t own much: My savings are around 50K$, money that now sits in the bank doing nothing.
I’ve been reading about what ETFs to invest into, but even those classified as climate friendly and social responsible include firms such as tesla, facebook, coca cola… not even close to being ethical.
Is there something akin to Michael Burry levels of ethical investment?
Money sitting in a bank is being used by the bank to invest in unethical businesses.
I’d suggest to not worry and put almost all of it in vanguard total market index fund (as long as you don’t need the money for 20 years). Use the profits to help people.
I agree with this for 99% of personal investors, but this sounds like what OP is already doing. They’re looking for something that goes further to support their beliefs.
It bothers me to a minor extent to technically contribute to some of these companies. I’m sure most of them do plenty of evil like polluting, wage theft, shady practices, etc. That’s how they get on the SP500 I assume.
I see it as rather capturing the US economy as a whole (or general representation of) and no one is picking favorites, it’s just that these are the x biggest traded companies right now. If one drops off, another replaces it. There’s no ethical decisions in the choice of companies that make up a market index other than to invest in it or not.
My ethical choice is prioritizing providing for me and my spouse in old age, and as we have no children, it’s up to us to ensure we have that, and this is what I felt was the most responsible decision to achieve that.
Like you alluded to, I invest in my community by volunteering, and I try to avoid as much consumerism as possible, especially from known shitty companies.
Outside of large shareholders like how Musk owns Tesla and sells his stock to fund fascism, buying stock does nothing for companies, ethical or not.
If you buy shares of an ethical green company, none of that money goes to the company. You bought the shares from someone else. It’s like buying a used book of Harry Potter. Absolutely no money goes to JK Rowling.
Absolutely not true, if everyone collectively decided not to buy these companies’ stocks anymore the price would drop and they’d get into financing problems.
Dude, that’s not how it works at all!
Stock price is a popularity contest that has virtually no basis on the finances of a company.
See Tesla’s crazy high price that has no basis on their current or future revenue. But if their stock dropped to 0, they would still be selling cars at a profit and wouldn’t go out of business. It wouldn’t change anything.
Companies get money from stock at IPO and when they extremely rarely issue new shares. That’s it. After IPO, you buying stock doesn’t give any money to the company. You are buying it from someone else.
That seems true. I don’t normally think that deep about it since my investment strategy is hands off. I’m really just paying Vanguard and Fidelity to buy bits and pieces of their shares.
I guess I just don’t like Elon and his type having anyone’s money and I don’t like me being able to link myself to them even if it’s a few steps removed.