Is your money, like mine, in gigantic Mutual Funds you know almost nothing about? I hate to think about what I’m actually invested in so I took a look at what Fidelity’s Asset Allocation fund, Asset Manager 60%, is invested in. Their top 10 include a number of treasury notes and bonds and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Barclays and Apple. They have almost 3000 different holdings in the fund.1 The treasuries tend to support the big financial institutions and I’m just not sure how I’m feeling about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac these days.
I want to put my money somewhere that is controlled by real people not Wall Street algorithms. I want my money to be put to work to create real value for real people; health, happiness, well being. The things Robert Kennedy suggested were missing from our GDP in this wonderful speech of his:
I discovered a fund that seems to hold real value at the heart of its investments AND make a good return. Portfolio 21. Portfolio 21 was written up in the June issue of Financial Advisor’s article, New Ways to Measure Risk: Portfolio 21’s Black Swan Strategy has Delivered Alpha Nine Years Out of Ten. Their strategy of investing based on sustainability factors has been very successful when measured against the S & P 500 Index. Portfolio 21's 10 year performance is nearly twice the S & P 500.
Check them out and let me know what you think. I'm moving my money!
1 Accessed November 26, 2011: http://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/316069582?refpr=MFEval_40f
I love that video Rachel! I really loved questioning the concept of GDP in Foundations and researching the Genuine Progress Indicator. That is awesome that you found a fund that really supports these beliefs. Thank you for doing this research.
ReplyDeleteYes, thanks Rachel. My marketing team is also working on a finance project around peer to peer lending for higher education. This video makes me think about trying to frame our solution on a bigger plane. It makes me think about our metrics and wonder what they will be as we hope to support the shift that Robert Kennedy was talking about soo many years ago.
ReplyDeleteGreat article on Portfolio 21 and their approach to analyzing companies and assessing risk. I wonder why it's taking so long for us to come up with a widely accepted replacement for GDP? Robert Kennedy nailed it over 40 years ago.
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