If You Invest…Consider This
Mark Goldstein

If you are an individual who has strong convictions and beliefs on moral and social issues such as abortion, pornography, homosexuality and the decline in the quality of media, you should learn where you are making money through your investments. The truth is, many mutual funds include the stocks of companies that support issues that you might be strongly against.

From the beginning of the US market, investors have focused almost exclusively on one thing: the potential returns they could expect from their investments. Times and values are changing, however. For the first time in recent memory, concerned investors are forcing financial professionals to insert a second consideration into their marketplace analysis: morally responsible investing. Christians are realizing, however, that corporate officers and money managers of funds are relatively oblivious to the moral obligations Christians are taught to honor. Consequently, Christian owners of mutual funds and individual stocks seem to have a fairly high chance of being unwitting participants in the abortion and pornography industries.

A small number of mutual funds have been developed that claim to be morally responsible, but when carefully scrutinized, some concerns are raised. Language is sometimes included in their prospectus that allows the fund managers to purchase virtually any company, regardless of its policies and practices. Two examples of misleading language include the phrases, “We will not invest in any company that is publicly perceived to violate our screens [standards]” and, “We will not invest in any company that derives in excess of twenty-five percent of its income from the screens [standards] we employ.” By employing such phrases, the mutual fund’s manager is free to purchase nearly any company that manager wants to place in the portfolio.

There are a few subscription services that make moral screening available to financial professionals. You can visit www.evalueator.com for assistance, or ask your financial adviser if they can perform moral screening on your investments. Be sure to ask for documentation and clarification, because your definition of screening and your financial planner’s may be quite different.