Ever hear about companies that have gone “woke” and invest accordingly. There are a lot of them and they are more than will to sacrifice corporate profits to brag about their “social justice” activities. Many of these companies now have diversity, inclusiveness and equity division within to pay for these activities. What is quickly lost are concerns for building stockholder equity and investment to advance the fundamental worth and competitiveness of the company.
The other day, I was listening to Tucker Carlson. He was interviewing an individual who had started an anti-E.S.G ETF (exchange traded fund.) Well, what did E.S.G. mean seemed to be appropriate question so I looked up a simple definition online. Here it is from Wikipedia:
“Environmental, social, and corporate governance is a theoretical approach to evaluating the extent to which a corporation works on behalf of social goals that will supposedly go beyond the role of a corporation to maximize profits on behalf of the corporation’s shareholders.”
To simplify all of the gibberish, this is just another, more complicated way, of saying “woke”.
As the discussion with Tucker Carlson continued, two things became immediately obvious. First, this anti-E.S.G.ETF was focused on making money. Forget all the “woke” stuff, and focus on good investments that maximize profits. Second, the majority of investors are small dollar folks. A $5000 investment was normal unlike many pro-E.S.G. ETFs where multi-million dollar investments demonstrating “wokeness” are the norm. Notably, this new ETF has now raised $100 Million in a very short period.
I am not here to shill for a particularly anti-E.S.G. ETF nor do I know whether it will be a success. What intrigued me was the return to the “bad old days” where corporations focused on business.