17 Comments
Jun 6, 2022Liked by Jeffrey Carter

investing is less efficient forms of energy surprisingly leads to less efficient returns on investment ... someone should sue the pants off the ESG managers for ignoring their fiduciary duty to the investors ... a client who will be dead in 10-30 years doesn't need or want a 50 year investment horizon ... and all the ESG nonsense aims at saving the planet in 50-100 years ... (one sign of a scam is the long horizon with no way the measure intermediate goals, and sketchy faulty "models" ...)

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Jun 6, 2022Liked by Jeffrey Carter

One benefit of inflation is that will cause a reevaluation of the malinvestment that occurred under ZIRP. Painful, very likely. But as Buffet (or someone said), when the tide goes out, those swimming naked are exposed.

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Jeff, nice column! Thank you. Amen to the last sentence.

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Jun 6, 2022Liked by Jeffrey Carter

Considering the ESG theme has some direct and indirect ties to the WEF/Davos, would love to see a post from you on WEF/Davos. Do we really want a world where the "less than 1%" unelected club get to dictate how the other 99%+ shall conduct themselves, while those same "less than 1%" individuals just go about their usual routines? I don't see them making any sacrifices they wish to impose on "the common folks" . . . no suggestions the big corporations they own and/or run clean up their own acts (figuratively and literally), but rather impose their "better world" views and diktats upon the populace (suggestions of carbon footprint tracking, global digital currencies, etc.). As the saying goes, "rules for thee, not for me".

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Jun 6, 2022Liked by Jeffrey Carter

Great article Jeff.

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ESG has been another one of those well-marketed things, like "factor investing" years ago . . . FWIW, factor investing in it's truest form is known as active portfolio management, which has been done for a long time, but without the cool name. : ) I'm glad to see at least some of the investing population is starting to see through the ESG fog, and Jeff I commend you dedicating a blog to call it out.

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I remembered today that Exxon-Mobil was replaced by a software company in the DJIA in the last year. I was curious and looked it up. Exxon-Mobil was replaced by Salesforce. As I was looking, I also saw that Pfizer was replaced by Amgen. This makes no sense to me. E-M and Pfizer have roughly $300 billion market caps. Salesforce and Amgen each have about half those caps. Is this ESG? Demoting petroleum companies? And Pfizer? That's one of the largest and most successful companies in American history. What gives here?

Curious if anybody else has a take.

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