Monday, August 26, 2019

"The NYSE Is About To Go Vegan" (VEGN)

Not vegan like WeWork went vegan* but vegan like Wall Street marketeers** want you to go vegan.
From SafeHaven:
As a response to growing demand to find investments that meet criteria of vegan investors, US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN) is set to hit the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on September 10th. It will be the first-ever fund of its kind in the world.    Created by vegan investing platform Beyond Investing, the fund will track the US Vegan Climate Index (VEGN), which was launched by Beyond Investing last year. 

The Index is currently home to 276 stocks with an average market value of $221 billion.

The index screens and removes companies whose business models rely on animal exploitation, first and foremost, but it also has quite a few other targets, including fossil fuel and environmental threats such as plastic and agrochemicals--all of which are harmful to wild animals.

Claire Smith, Beyond Investing’s CEO said that the aim is to help vegans and animal activists take the pain out of their portfolios will exclude stocks among the 500 largest US companies that “rely on animal exploitation,” which means tossing out some 43% of them....
...MORE

*To which we responded with a can't-miss idea also explored in "Want To Get China To The Trade Negotiating Table? Here's How You Get China To The Trade Negotiating Table" :
...strategically located bar-b-que food trucks equipped with giant fans to waft the aroma at WeWork properties.

**In an April 2007 post, "Indexes, ETF's and Global Warming" I said (emphasis added):

A few weeks ago Mark Gongloff had a post at the WSJ.com's EnergyRoundup with the cautionary title "Alternative Energy’s “Cover” Moment?". He ended the post with this humble line "And that could be one reason why the alternative-energy boom might continue for a while after all. Or at least, there’s a 50/50 chance of it."

Of all the "Cover Moments" the most infamous is the Aug. 13, '79 BusinessWeek "The Death of Equities" with the DJIA around 875. Paul Kedrosky has a great chart at Infectious Greed.

If you note that date, it was three years before the Big Bull started, with the Dow closing at 776.92 (I think; That day was a lifetime ago) on Aug. 12, 1982. My personal favorite cover moment was the Oct. 4 1999 BusinessWeek "The Internet Age". Both of these pale before Prof Irving Fisher's timing of his Sep. 4, 1929 statement "There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash." (the DJIA had peaked the day before at 381, it would bottom at 41 in 1932), or his more famous Oct. '29 "...permanently high plateau".

All this history came welling up (from an admitedly strange mind) because of a line--"Cleantech: The New Biotech" that Richard Kang used a few months ago in a posting to Seeking Alpha: "Tree Huggers Unite! A Survey of Cleantech ETFs".

The Amex rolled out the BTK biotech index in October 1991 and a very astute trader told me that was a top, get flat or short of the biotechs. Good call...The biowrecks fell 50+% over the next three years....

...Is it just me or did you just hear a clang, clang, clang?
Also 2015's "Please, For The Love Of God and All You Hold Dear, Give BlackRock Some Liquidity! (CNYA)"
The MSCI China 'A' shares index, upon which the BlackRock product is based, is up 92.21% in the 12 months ended March 31. And another 11% last week....