xxd09 wrote:I recollect them being on offer many years ago under various names like Stewardship fund etc
Thy can be found in Google under “Ethical Funds” plus their historical performances
Ethical investment has ben on the go since investing started but never seems manage to go mainstream
All seem to have disappeared-poor performance presumably
Well you haven't answered my question but it seems you want me to go off to find evidence to support your assertion.
(Which, according to you, I shouldn't be able to find anyway 'cos they "
All seem to have disappeared"! LOL)
To be clear, mine was a genuine question; I come into this without any particular opinion or preconceptions on the matter. However, I did do a search and came up with:
"
Majority of ESG funds outperform wider market over 10 years
Study of sustainable funds counters claims that ESG investment comes at the expense of performance"
https://www.ft.com/content/733ee6ff-446e-4f8b-86b2-19ef42da3824 or if that hits a paywall
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aft.com+%22Majority+of+ESG+funds+outperform+wider+market+over+10+years%22 and click on the resultant link.
On funds "disappearing", the above article also says: ""
Morningstar found that sustainable funds have greater survivorship rates than non-ESG vehicles. On average, 77 per cent of ESG funds that were available 10 years ago still exist, compared with 46 per cent for traditional funds.If anyone wants to see the actual report of the study the FT is referring to one can sign up to get it as
https://www.morningstar.com/en-uk/lp/Eu ... erformance, however that page says that
Active Funds Dominates (and I suspect your anecdotal comments also refer to active funds) and this board and the OP's query are about
passive funds. On that matter I found:
https://www.ishares.com/uk/professional/en/literature/brochure/ishares-sustainable-mythbusting-index-investing-en-emea-pc-brochure.pdf, which includes:
"
Myth 6: You have to sacrifice performance when using sustainable indexing.
Fact: Early evidence on ESG index performance strongly challenges the tired misconception that sustainable investing requires giving up financial returns for better ESG outcomes."
However, while iShares has quite a number of ESG EFTs, they are all pretty new (within the last 3 years it seems), so we can't judge long term performance, and Investors Chronicle did an article on ESG funds a couple of issues back (which I can't find online) in which it was opined that the out-performance of ESG ETFs was at least partly due to the large amounts of money going in, hence bidding up the prices of the constituent companies.
I suppose that could also work from the other side too, if investors follow the likes of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund (ironically built from oil revenues) and dump non-ESG companies, such as fossil fuel ones, depressing their prices, then the ESG indices would outperform 'cos the non-ESG ones would be under-performing ....
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/12/worlds-biggest-sovereign-wealth-fund-to-ditch-fossil-fuels