A Stock for Investing in Recycled Plastics

When panic ensues in the financial markets, financial services firms are quick to reach out and assure their clients that they have everything under control. Cancels affect run rates, and clients need to know that all those tools they’re paying exorbitant amounts of money for will work in bear markets as well as bull markets. “Get on the phones and call your clients,” the Managing Director will shout during the all-hands sales meeting, after which all the sycophants scurry back to their desks and pretend to be making client calls.

One financial services firm – that shall remain unnamed – told their clients last week how well “green stocks” are outperforming “brown stocks,” which is convenient given their CEO’s desire to go full-blown ESG in the coming years. Whether or not ESG outperforms is debatable, but what’s not debatable is the extent to which opinions differ about “brown” vs. “green.” Independent investment management firm Brown Advisory suggests that ESG ratings ought to be taken with a grain of salt because there such a mismatch of ratings between data providers:

The wide