Socially Responsible Investing Isn't Cut and Dry

Matt Thalman - INO.com Contributor - ETFs - Socially Responsible Investing


When it comes to investing in socially responsible companies, a lot depends on what values and principles you hold in high regard when you are trying to find the right fund for you.

Socially responsible or ethical investing encompasses a wide range of sub-sectors which you need to sift through before just jumping into an “ethically responsible” fund. For example, there are environmentally focused funds, funds that concentrate their efforts on finding companies who have sound corporate governance policies, others that look at the impact a business has on society as a whole, and this is just to name a few.

One fund that may be “ethical” and may not be would be the Inspire Global Hope Large-Cap ETF (BLES). The fund tries to find companies which the fund manager believes to line-up with “biblical values” and even has a proprietary scoring system which measures a company’s level of participation in abortion, gambling, alcohol, pornography, “the LGBT lifestyle,” just to name some of the big topics. But while some people may find some “biblical-values” ethical, others may not find them to be, one, in particular, being the “LGBT lifestyle” metric. Continue reading "Socially Responsible Investing Isn't Cut and Dry"