Sphere

Did you know that the energy sector (i.e. oil and gas companies) has had the lowest returns of any sector in the economy over the past ten years? Join a webinar about our oil and gas-free 7bps option, the Sphere 500 Climate Fund (SPFFX) Learn more about the Sphere 500 Climate Fund (SPFFX) here: https://lnkd.in/gPbKiMXN Source: https://lnkd.in/gdkpNbWD 17592314-UFD 11/09/2023

My friend’s home just burned down. As I sit down to write an update for our community about how Sphere is doing, all I can think about is the fires that are raging not far from here in LA. About what I can do to help. And the irony is: we have so many exciting updates! Our asset growth took off as the year came to a close. We went live on Fidelity, the biggest 401(k) platform in the country, last week. Our community round has taken off. And yet, none of it feels like enough. I left my first company, Ayar Labs, after five straight summers of wildfires in the Bay Area, feeling that I needed to do more, and faster, to turn around climate change. I started Sphere because I realized moving money may be the most effective way to speed up change. And yet, right now none of it seems like enough. What do we do when things feel hopeless? For answers, I’m turning to our community. When Trump, a president with unprecedentedly harmful policies for climate, got reelected, Sphere saw an uptick in new customers. Why was that? Our new customers realize they can’t control national policy. But they can control their own money. And they’re taking action where they do have control. I had the good fortune of having an Olympic gold medalist speak at my school when I was a kid, and her message stuck with me: the key to success is always asking yourself: What is the most important thing I can be doing at this moment in time? For her, in the days leading up to the Olympics, it was training hard. In the evenings, it was eating well and getting good sleep. On the flight to the event, it was clearing her mind and being present in the moment. No matter the moment, she asked herself that question. And it led her to gold. At this moment in time, for those of us who aren’t firefighters or advisors to politicians, what is the most important thing we can do? It turns out, when it comes to climate change, the most impactful thing you can do is move your money. If you are fortunate enough to have long-term savings, the single most impactful thing you can do is move those savings into climate-friendly funds. If you haven’t started saving yet, but you have a bank account, the most impactful thing you can do is move to a climate-friendly bank. It may seem far-fetched at first. How does money impact climate change? NPR did an amazing deep-dive on the direct ways retirement savings fund new oil, gas, and coal projects on their show Reveal in September. It turns out Vanguard and Blackrock funds are major shareholders of new dirty energy projects. So if we’re investing in their funds, we’re helping to make that possible. The beauty of this problem, though, is that no one is forcing us to invest this way. It’s just become the standard for everyone to invest in everything, to diversify and reduce risk. That means no president can stop us from changing how we invest. This is one change we can make entirely on our own. And it turns out: [Click below to keep reading.]

I woke up yesterday with the song Do My Thing by Estelle and Janelle Monáe bopping around in my head. It’s a more upbeat song than I expected to be humming on a day like yesterday. But as I went through my morning routine, I realized how appropriate it is. Let me explain: Sphere came into being during the first Trump presidency. As a result, resiliency is built into the fiber of its mission. In 2020, the Trump administration passed new rules saying that climate friendly investing was not allowed in 401(k)s. But: the rule clarified that employers could add any kind of investment option, including a climate-friendly one, if their decision was based on financial data points. Looking at history, we realized that excluding fossil fuel companies from investment portfolios has been a winning prospect over the time horizons that matter in retirement. We didn’t need permission to make climate-friendly investment choices. The financial data was on our side. Since then, the Biden administration has reversed the Trump-era rules and made it clear that climate-friendly investing is allowed in 401(k)s. But the reality is, our mission has remained unchanged, despite that rule update. In the years since we founded this company, excluding fossil fuels has continued to perform well over retirement-scale time horizons, even though oil prices had a short-term spike when Putin invaded Ukraine. So as I think about what to do in our new political reality, the lyrics of Do My Thing feel especially appropriate. I’m gonna keep doing my thing. Climate-friendly investing in 401(k)s makes sense, regardless of who is president. And no president can stop us from getting climate-friendly options in every 401(k). In some ways, it’s a good allegory for the climate movement at large. No president is ever going to be able to save us from climate change. Politicians respond to people. We need to demand a better future for ourselves, if we want to make that a reality. That was going to be true regardless of who won yesterday‘s election. I saw something on a walk the other day that made me laugh (click in to this post to keep reading):