This 3rd Week of October 2021 Thoughts

16 years ago I applied to the Unitarian Universalist’s Investment Committee after being encouraged by a fellow UU and I was flabbergasted when I was appointed to the Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (CSRI). I knew about a thimbleful of SRI facts and strategies, but that one event has rippled through my life, and in turn, through yours. I later moved to the Investment Committee after they realized my strength was investments and today, I’m back on the SRI committee. Kathy Mulvey, with the Union of Concerned Scientists, is our chair and she is known all through the Sustainable Impact Investing community. Have some fun with the Greenwashing Bingo Card link below and stay tuned.

"It's finally happening: this Thursday, Big Oil CEOs are being called before Congress to answer for their decades of deadly climate disinformation and delay. The fossil fuel industry has known about the climate risks of fossil fuels since at least 1959 but they've spent decades and billions of dollars to deceive the public and delay climate action.

Now, the leaders of fossil fuel giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP—along with the American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce—will appear before the congressional Oversight Committee to face the questions they've been avoiding for decades. Congress will ask them about what they knew about their products' contributions to climate change and when they knew it. These executives will have to answer for practices that have delayed climate action.

But we've seen how Big Oil talks about its dirty business, and we know what to expect this week: more deflection, disinformation, and passing the buck. We've created a Fossil Fuel CEO Greenwashing Bingo to help you identify and push back against fossil fuel executives' false claims."

Want to see what you own? Here is the rating of one of the funds many of my clients used to own...the American Funds Washington Mutual. How easy is this! https://fossilfreefunds.org/ is the main site...and this is for Washington Mutual: https://fossilfreefunds.org/fund/american-funds-washington-mutual-investors-fund/AWSHX/fossil-fuel-investments/FSUSA002RR/FOUSA00FUP

Mark Hulbert has plotted the yields of corporate bonds for each month since 1984, against the total returns for those months had you bought and held for 9 years. Notice how close is the correlation between the two is!

😲 Why does this matter to you? Higher bond yields are more than money in the bank: total return of the market is closely tied to yields. Estimates for what portfolios are expected to earn for a diversified, balanced portfolio, called the Capital Market Assumptions, is forecast for the next 7 years, and now is expected to earn 5%. This is why I pay so much attention to market drawdowns: you are not being paid enough to suffer a hard sell off.

Today, more investors have developed two kinds of “tunnel vision.” Recency bias is now 50% and is being influenced by recent news, events or experiences and compares to 35% who fell victim to this short-term-thinking in 2020. Then, the tendency to have confirmation bias, which is seeking information that reinforces what you already believe, has more than doubled from 24% in 2020 to 50% in 2021. See other behaviors below!

😲 Why does this matter to you? Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it: looking for evidence to prove what you believe is a recipe for disaster. We can’t stop looking for information that reflects the facts, just the facts, today. Trust me to always help us both stay real. No fake news for us.