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?
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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.
Or you could switch from using a bank to a credit union.
Who probably also do business you would personally not like. It’s a good suggestion, but it doesn’t solve the problem we’re talking about.
Credit unions don’t have shareholders. They face totally different pressures.
Their members are their shareholders, and largely demand the same shit. I’ve been part of one, it’s different but still kind of the same.
I do always go credit union or my local state-owned bank, though, because otherwise I’m paranoid they’re scamming me somehow.
I finally made the switch to a credit union. I had them for years for my car loans, but never really bothered using them for my primary checking account. After some recent terrible calls to Huntington bank, I decided to just move everything over to my credit union and close the bank account.
So far it’s much better. The rates are better. The customer service is better trained and understands what I’m trying to say (as well as english.) The website and app are far better. There’s also a recession coming and I felt it was better to use a credit union than a bank anyway.
I have been wanting to do this for a while and just never made a priority of it until after my last few calls I had to Huntington and that just signaled it was time to leave.
If you’re skipping ahead of the part where you should take care of yourself, then the only ethical choice in this day and age is “diamond hands”.
Forcing a CEO to remain profitable for the long term.
“Ethical” investment funds are just scams gaming certain metrics to keep their ethical label. Pick a company that provides value to the world, and give it a loan with no expectation that it grow to infinity. Pull out if the new CEO is some whiz kid saying profits are going to go to the moon now.
Sincerely: random internet stranger
Not sure what you mean by Michael Burry levels of ethical investment, but he has a fund and apparently its most recent disclosed holdings are here. You could just buy (or rather sell, in most cases) those. As you can see 6 out of 7 positions are short - meaning he’s betting the stock price will decline - and if you would rather bet against every corporation shorting is an option. But be aware, it’s very hard to make money shorting because you’re fighting inflation and losses are unlimited. Great way to go bankrupt, especially if you’re new to investing.
Beyond that, if you want minimal exposure to some asshole CEO, you can invest in commodities like Gold (e.g. GLD, which is a gold ETF that just holds gold bars, and generally goes up over time) and a billion other things. Bond etfs are another option (but pose some risk of losing money at the moment due to inflation/interest rate fears), and if you wanna be a sort of landlord you can do a REIT. Many of these pay dividends which probably lowers your risk of loss to some degree. The markets are a little nutty right now and I can’t think of a single thing that’s easy to predict at the moment.
Finally, there’s simpler options like high interest savings and CDs, which aren’t as terrible of an option as usual because interest rates are higher than inflation in the US for the time being.
I-bonds or any other government debt vehicle that is a necessary part of money circulation. It’s a win-win. Either your money goes up, or the system has collapsed and a new world can be built.
I’d say buy CDs from a credit union, or municipal bonds (riskier though). In fact maybe the best thing to do for now is to move your banking over to a credit union if there’s one you can join, or to a smaller local bank if you can’t and you’re with one of the big bastards.
After that, in terms of stock, an S&P index fund will have some of the best and most consistent returns, and all you’re really betting on is ‘line goes up.’ One could try to find an individual ethical company or companies, like maybe publicly traded B Corps, but even those I have doubts about.
And real estate isn’t getting any cheaper, so if you already own a home, I suppose you could buy another one and rent it at cost. You get equity, and the renters presumably get below market rent. Maintain the property, give the renters right of first refusal if you decide to sell, and sell at marginal markup rather than market rate and you’d probably be doing better than your average landlord. This is the toughest route to follow while not being a bastard.
Not really. I think maybe if you can buy China government bonds maybe, that’s as close as you can get.
You think the Chinese government is ethical?
There’s no nation state that Is “good”, but it’s the one currently with the best shot at producing a better world than we have now.
Far moreso than western governments, yes.
