ESG Underperformance will be its Undoing
Klaus A. Wobbe
CEO & Co-Founder @ Intalcon | Systematic Investment Strategies that generate an outperformance and support the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
ESG is the hot topic in the financial market right now, and demand is also driving product development. There are reasons why large asset managers have embraced this trend so readily - higher fees. Yes, you too, dear readers, could own an ESG fund that costs nearly three times as much as an S&P 500 index product just to feel good about it. BTW: With just one click, this article is also available in German language .
ESG underperformance will be the strategy’s eventual undoing. I discussed the many problems with ESG investing in previous posts here:
In those previous articles, we primarily focused on the excessive expense ratios charged for funds that are essentially duplicates of low costs benchmark indexes. To wit: With ESG now the rage, the “demand” drives product development. However, there is also an understanding of why large asset managers have embraced the strategy so readily – higher fees. Yes, you too can own an ESG fund that is almost three times as expensive as the S&P 500 index fund, all for the sake of “feeling good about yourself.”
While ESG investing gets promoted as a way for individuals to “invest with their principals", such has been a windfall marketing scheme by Wall Street firms.
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT
In the late ’90s, Wall Street moved to limit investing in “sin” stocks such as gambling, tobacco, etc. Just as it was then, investors initially jumped on board, but when returns failed to outperform the benchmark index, that “fad” died. The same occurs today as investors who want to be “woke” are demanding products that make them feel good to purchase. However, just as we have witnessed with the various ARKK ETFs, while you may “feel good” about owning “disruptive” companies, that changes quickly when those companies are no longer performing. See chart below.
The same occurred with the allure of cryptocurrencies as “laser-eyed” zealots retreated into the abyss following a crushing decline. See next chart.
Such is inherently the issue facing ESG funds. Investors might be willing to pay higher expense ratios as long as they earn higher returns. However, ultimately they will focus on ESG underperformance, which will likely become more prevalent as funds that previously underperformed and lost assets simply rebranded themselves.
“Epic greenwashing is everywhere: Out of 253 funds that switched to an ESG focus in 2020 in the US, 87 per cent of them rebranded by adding words such as ‘sustainable’ or “ESG” or ‘green’ or ‘climate’ to their names. None changed their stock or bond holdings at that point.” Source: Eco-Business
Unsurprisingly, the buzzword of “investing scam” is gaining more traction. “The Securities and Exchange Commission said this month that it was planning on cracking down on misleading ESG claims. New rules ‘would specify disclosures to be made by investment funds when they mention terms like ‘ESG,’ ‘low-carbon’, or ‘sustainable’ in their names. Regulators are also looking at ‘ESG funds marketing and how environmental, social and governance is incorporated into investing along with these funds voting at companies’ annual meetings.” Source: Bloomberg
Not surprisingly, outflows are rising as ESG underperformance continues, as can be seen in the next chart.
INFLATION COULD KILL ESG
Another problem for the ESG “investing scam” is inflation. If you believe inflation is here to stay, ESG underperformance will continue, too. While 2022 has been so far a year of “inflation” concerns by the Fed, the underperformance of ESG relative to the energy sector has been quite profound.
“As Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid puts it, ‘one of the side effects of the hawkish pivot from the Fed in 2022, that continued this week’ is that it could finally crack the facade of ESG and make January a catastrophic month for ESG investors; this is shown in Reid’s Chart of the Day which lays out the 1-month rolling difference between S&P 500 Energy sector returns and the NASDAQ.” Source: ZeroHedge
领英推荐
However, that underperformance didn’t just start in January of 2022. In 2021 the surge in money supply led to increasing rates of inflationary pressures. As we showed previously, inflation is currently running well above the Fed’s target inflation rate.
Not surprisingly, that inflationary surge showed up at the gasoline pump as oil prices rocketed higher. As a consequence, and of no real surprise, investors dumped ESG funds in favor of “dirty" energy. It is also worth noting that ESG funds also underperformed the SPY tracking index.
ESG investing may be great for headlines, but it is all about performance when it comes to investors.
One problem with ESG investing is that it makes no difference to the environment. As investors buy shares of a mutual fund, the fund manager then purchases shares of the underlying investments from the open market. In this scenario, how were carbon emissions reduced?
LANCE ROBERTS
WANT TO BE ESG, PLANT A TREE
Another problem with ESG investing is that it makes NO difference to the environment. Think about how mutual fund investing works for a moment. As investors buy shares of a mutual fund, the fund manager then purchases shares of the underlying investments from the open market. The underlying companies receive no capital from the transaction, nor are they aware a transaction occurred.
In this scenario, how were carbon emissions reduced? Were trees planted? Did companies take a different direction with their management teams?
If you want to be a socially responsible investor, there is only ONE way to achieve that goal. You must invest directly in private startup companies tackling climate change effectively. Once a company is public, all you do is trade dollars for another investor’s shares. As noted, that transaction has ZERO impact on the environment or the company.
ESG IS IN TROUBLE
RBC Wealth Management surveyed over 900 US-based clients recently. 49% said that performance and returns were a higher priority than ESG impact, up from 42% last year.
“The story told is you don’t have to give up returns in order to do ESG. But everyone assumed that you would get the same exact return profile as a traditional benchmark. Which is absolutely not true because traditional benchmarks are not looking at ESG factors", says Kent McClanahan, VP Responsible Investing at RBC.
RBC clients also expressed skepticism about the ESG label. 74% of those surveyed said many companies provide misleading information about their ESG initiatives. As noted, the SEC’s proposal for new restrictions to ensure ESG funds accurately describe their investments could address that problem.
ESG is in trouble. For proof, look no further than the Bloomberg Opinion headline “The Virtue Bubble Is About to Burst, Good Riddance”, or, the news the head of Deutsche Bank’s fund management unit got toppled after police raided looking into alleged “greenwashing.”
"Much of this is an understandable overreaction to the understandable over-praise that the concept enjoyed for many years. It also reflects the growing realization that ESG only seemed to be a good idea because it delivered great returns. At first, with big money flows being directed into places that hadn’t received so much capital before. ESG was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. A big element of its success to date, it now becomes apparent, is good old-fashioned return-chasing”, says John Authers, Senior Editor for Markets and Bloomberg Opinion columnist.
Ultimately, investors constantly seek out investment performance over time. As such, ESG investing will either evolve or give way to a new breed of “Sin Stocks.” I suspect that Wall Street will win whichever way it eventually turns out.
the price makes the narrative
2 年great and honest article. Nothing will change by changing labels of existing products or creating new ones without any real purpose behind it.
Full-time Autodidact
2 年The harder it is to beat the market, the better are the marketing guys who create eco-friendly investments only in paper to justify higher fees.
Sustainability & Responsible Investing Specialist . Senior Investment Advisor cross assets.
2 年Thank you Klaus for sharing. Scary paper. What have been done in ESG investing, mostly funds and ETFs, is a disaster. Instead of giving a clear financial understanding of the climate and societal risks in economy, we have created complexity - may be to justify costs. Whatever the names are or contain “Green, Ocean, Planet” or are labelised Article 8 by regulators (9 being different), the job is clearly not done (or half done) at the end. It is a drama. Very few boutiques practice what must be a norm in ESG: direct engagement to make sure clients’ investments work for them and not against all of us. Sadly for those impact boutiques it is nearly impossible to pass on the ramp of banks’ selection. Something must change quickly.
"Are You Climate Ready?" at @AYCR1234
2 年Post 2...Intentional is a reference to #ethics, and when it is a lie, undermines #trust ( explanation of #trust by the #EdelmanTrustbarometer, which is built on #competence and #ethics. Point 4, as we have seen in many situations, what is captures as the E in ESG is the EFFECT of the environment on the portfolio (project, asset or activity), but does NOT take into account the IMPACT that the portfolio (PAA) has on the environment. So what is the message I suggest you take from this? Due diligence means reading the fine print. It means if you don't know that the offer is really about, you are enabling #greenwashing. If you don't understand what the IMPACTS are - see if the company has a robust, credible and reliable #EnvironmentalManagementSystems (#EMS) based on #ISO14001. It's not about whether or not the EMS is certified, it's about asking the questions that get to the heart of the matter. We all need to take responsibility if we want to make the transition back to a safe operating space for our species and all the species and ecosystems upon which we depend. (see the #StockholmResilienceCentre #planetaryboundaries).
"Are You Climate Ready?" at @AYCR1234
2 年While there are several issues this article points out I will limit myself to commenting on four (shared in two postings). First, the majority of the world is eco-illiterate. Despite being entirely dependent on the planet for our lives and livelihoods, as a species we are ignorant of the rules by which Mother Nature operates this planet. Two, and directly related to the first point. Far, far too many believe that we can renegotiate ecological debt as we do for economic debt. Yet Mother Nature does not accept any of our fiat or digital currencies (see first point). Three, #greenwashing in the financial world is a spreading faster than Covid. In an ISO guidance standard on #greenfinance, #ISO14100 that is about to be published, we defined #greenwashing as "“false or misleading information, either intentionally or inadvertently, regarding the environmental or sustainability attributes of a product, asset, and activity, which can have consequences on the assessment of financial and non-financial materiality.” Inadvertent is a polite way of addressing point 1 above, which calls into question #competence (see articles by Kim Schumacher, PhD, CEnv).