What is Socially Responsible Investing?

Socially responsible investing (SRI), also known as ethical and green investing, means avoiding industries that negatively affect the environment and its people. This includes companies that produce or invest in alcohol, tobacco, gambling and weapons. Instead, SRI involves investing in companies engaged in ethical and socially conscious themes, like environmental sustainability and social justice.

SRI has changed a lot in the past ten years. In the past, this type of investing unfortunately provided low returns and had little impact on investors wealth other than making them feel positive about their portfolio. Today, with the number of different investment alternatives great performance can be achieved with socially conscience guidance.

How does it work?

Our selection process begins with focusing solely on performance. We turn a blind eye to pretty brochures and sparkly fund managers who can easily influence decisions and instead focus on how well the investment is actually performing.

To assess performance, we start by using Barron's Magazine Annual Top-Performing Sustainable Funds Guide. Additionally, we use the annual survey of sustainable funds in Morningstar’s database which screens the large company US stock funds with sustainable grades of above average or high. Morningstar financial analysts create a list of 203 funds with more than one trillion dollars in total assets and then determines which are the best according to the funds specific guidelines.

After consulting both the Barron’s and Morningstar reports, we then apply our ranking system which rank each fund against one another, and against the market to find the best performing. From this ranking, we invest in the five best investment choices and adjust and re-rank as time goes on.