Have you ever wondered what your financial managers, who are entrusted with managing your lifelong savings, are actually doing with your money? Are they investing to achieve the highest possible returns so that you can retire comfortably and maybe even buy a vacation home or leave a substantial inheritance for your descendants? Or are they injecting their own political biases into your investment portfolio?
Recent signs indicate that they often lean towards the latter. They are playing politics with people’s retirement funds, which violates their fiduciary responsibility to their vast clientele. This scheme could potentially cause ordinary people to lose tens of thousands of dollars in retirement income per person, or even more.
I’m referring to the latest trend on Wall Street known as “ESG investing”. ESG investing involves considering various environmental, social, and governance factors in addition to financial returns when making investments, secretly diverting Americans’ personal savings (without their knowledge or explicit approval) into “green” or other “socially conscious” investments.
Here’s how it works: leftist radicals infiltrate shareholder meetings of retail giants like Walmart or oil and gas industry titans like Exxon, pushing for votes on hostile shareholder resolutions such as implementing racial quotas in hiring or advancing radical climate change priorities like divesting from oil and gas assets, even though these companies have been among the top performers in the Fortune 500.
Numerous studies indicate that adhering to these stringent environmental, social, and governance requirements can lower shareholder returns, affecting a massive shareholder base that includes you and me, as well as the 125 million ordinary Americans investing their pensions in the stock market.
Our latest research conducted under the non-profit organization “the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP)” based in Washington, D.C., evaluated over a hundred of the largest money management funds, ranging from giants like Fidelity in Boston, Blackrock in New York, to Morgan Stanley in New York. In a way, these fund managers wield significant influence over Wall Street and the global economy, handling trillions of dollars in assets.
The following companies received the lowest rankings and were graded an “F”:
– Guggenheim Funds (New York): “F”
– Mutual of America Funds (New York): “F”
– Morgan Stanley Funds: “F”
– BNP Paribas Asset (Paris): “F”
Our research report found that these companies and many others are suspected of violating their fiduciary duty to seek the best returns for their clients, often voting in support of radical leftist resolutions without the clients’ consent. One way to protect oneself from such nefarious corporate misconduct is to transfer funds to more trustworthy alternatives.
I am pleased to report that three major money management companies do not engage in ESG gimmicks and received an “A” grade on our report card: Dimensional Investment Funds in Texas, Vanguard in Pennsylvania, and T. Rowe Price in Maryland. Vanguard, in particular, was once a staunch advocate of ESG strategies but has since announced its withdrawal.
Of course, there is some positive news in terms of environmental, social, and governance ideals as well. Research from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity found that ESG investing has been on the decline in the past year or so. This is because conservative shareholders are beginning to withdraw funds from companies that covertly undermine their values or diminish the returns from purchasing funds with their deposits.
If investors want to invest in genuinely ESG-oriented funds, they have every right to do so. After all, it is their money. However, we cannot tolerate the imposition of costly ESG policies on investors without their explicit consent.
If enough American citizens use their dollars to vote and instruct their brokers to cease and desist immediately, this shareholder rebellion can permanently end the harm caused by the ESG ideology.
Note: This rewritten and translated article is based on the original content “Don’t Let America’s Biggest Money Managers Play Politics With Your Pension” which was published in the English edition of Epoch Times newspaper. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Epoch Times.