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I refuse to hold broad funds for this reason. It's much less convenient and potentially a lot costlier (making individual stock trades or at least sticking to s

by pktgen 12y ago

I refuse to hold broad funds for this reason. It's much less convenient and potentially a lot costlier (making individual stock trades or at least sticking to smaller sector funds, which generally have higher expense ratios, where I can approve of each holding), but I have my own definition of evil companies and I refuse to hold even 0.0000000000000001% of them.

jacquesm 12y ago
It is not only less convenient and potentially costlier it also means you carry much higher risks. I applaud you for your principled stance but you should be aware of all the consequences.
- pktgen 12y ago
  I'm aware, such a stance is definitely on the very opposite end of the simplicity of a total market fund. Even choosing some sector funds is difficult. REITs for example would seem to be an easy one in my opinion (I see nothing wrong with renting real property for money), but the Vanguard fund VNQ still manages to own at least one company I refuse to own, Corrections Corporation of America, so I won't own that fund. (Another term for this is "socially responsible investing" and there are indexes, and associated high-fee funds, that claim to seek it. However, I feel this is a very personal issue; I wouldn't use such an index because someone's definition of socially responsible/non-evil may be very different from mine. My opinion is such indexes/funds are just gimmicks with high expense ratios.) And even if such an approach will most likely lead to lower returns (for example, due to higher fees in paying commissions, though that can be reduced or eliminated by smartly taking advantage of brokerage promos), I'm fine with that. I'll take my $1.00 earned from what I consider to be ethical means vs. $10.00 earned from what I consider to be unethical means.
logicallee 12y ago
>and I refuse to hold even 0.0000000000000001% of them. You say that, but 0.0000000000000001% of even the world's largest company by market cap (Apple, at 592.44B) would be $0.000000560337 if you ever so much as glance at an ad an evil company runs, then assuming a CPM of $0.01 (two orders of magnitude lower than actual average cost), your single glance is worth $0.00001 or 17 times the value you said you would never hold. So you'd never hold $0.0000000000000001% of an evil company but you are more than happy to just give them 17 times that value for free by glancing at one of their ads at some point in your life? You need to lower your purity standards if you don't want to be a hypocrite :) EDIT: all right, I mixed my metaphor. just think of an evil ad company :)
- pktgen 12y ago
  I'm not sure I follow you about giving them 17 times that value. If I think a company is evil, that means I won't be buying their products, so if they're paying for my ad impression, that's good from my point of view because they're just throwing money away without any chance of me buying their product. (Not that the amount of money is meaningful, but still.) But yeah, the 0.xxx1% percentage was just exaggeration :P

by pktgen 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

It is not only less convenient and potentially costlier it also means you carry much higher risks. I applaud you for your principled stance but you should be aware of all the consequences.

pktgen 12y ago
I'm aware, such a stance is definitely on the very opposite end of the simplicity of a total market fund. Even choosing some sector funds is difficult. REITs for example would seem to be an easy one in my opinion (I see nothing wrong with renting real property for money), but the Vanguard fund VNQ still manages to own at least one company I refuse to own, Corrections Corporation of America, so I won't own that fund. (Another term for this is "socially responsible investing" and there are indexes, and associated high-fee funds, that claim to seek it. However, I feel this is a very personal issue; I wouldn't use such an index because someone's definition of socially responsible/non-evil may be very different from mine. My opinion is such indexes/funds are just gimmicks with high expense ratios.) And even if such an approach will most likely lead to lower returns (for example, due to higher fees in paying commissions, though that can be reduced or eliminated by smartly taking advantage of brokerage promos), I'm fine with that. I'll take my $1.00 earned from what I consider to be ethical means vs. $10.00 earned from what I consider to be unethical means.

logicallee 12y ago

>and I refuse to hold even 0.0000000000000001% of them. You say that, but 0.0000000000000001% of even the world's largest company by market cap (Apple, at 592.44B) would be $0.000000560337 if you ever so much as glance at an ad an evil company runs, then assuming a CPM of $0.01 (two orders of magnitude lower than actual average cost), your single glance is worth $0.00001 or 17 times the value you said you would never hold. So you'd never hold $0.0000000000000001% of an evil company but you are more than happy to just give them 17 times that value for free by glancing at one of their ads at some point in your life? You need to lower your purity standards if you don't want to be a hypocrite :) EDIT: all right, I mixed my metaphor. just think of an evil ad company :)

pktgen 12y ago
I'm not sure I follow you about giving them 17 times that value. If I think a company is evil, that means I won't be buying their products, so if they're paying for my ad impression, that's good from my point of view because they're just throwing money away without any chance of me buying their product. (Not that the amount of money is meaningful, but still.) But yeah, the 0.xxx1% percentage was just exaggeration :P