ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance. And similar to the world of organic and all

natural foods, ESG has largely been used as a marketing tactic by fund companies to attract investors.

In fact, when you look under the hood of many of the popular ESG investment products,

you'll often find companies like ExxonMobil, Microsoft, McDonald's, and

JPMorgan, companies that most would not associate with ESG investing.

MSCI is one of the major players in the space that provides ESG ratings and data

services to big investment firms like BlackRock and Invesco.

Investment firms then use these ratings to justify a

sustainable or environmental label on their ESG stock and bond funds. A few years ago, Bloomberg

ran an article on the topic questioning these largely unregulated rating systems saying,

quote, the ratings don't measure a company's impact on

earth and society.

In fact, they gauge the opposite, the potential impact of the world on the company and its

shareholders, a far cry from what many investors believe they are getting.

Welcome to Stay Walthy podcast.

I'm your host Taylor Schulte, and today I'm

revisiting a topic that I covered several years ago on the show, and that is ESG investing. Because the

world of ESG is messy, complicated, and lacks proper oversight, I asked Liz Simi, co-founder of

Honey Tree Investment Management, to help break it down for us. When Liz joined me on

the show four years ago, her investment solutions were only available to Canadian investors.

However, in late 2023, she officially launched her U.S. stock ETF, which targets companies that

match her philosophy and definition of ESG investing. Companies with long-term growth

...