This video is a riot, I was happy to take part in it:

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Can This Extremely Loud Man Make You Rich?

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ESG

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Did asset managers violate their fiduciary duty by voting in favor of pro-ESG measures?-X

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Interesting thread on X about the Business Roundtable.

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Iowa attorney general says antisemitism is a growing concern in investment strategies-Iowa Capital Dispatch

Bird launched an investigation into MSCI, a financial investment company providing data and analytics tools for investment funds, on Thursday over allegations of the company targeting Israel-affiliated businesses. Speaking Friday on “Iowa Press,” Bird, a Republican, said the investigation is based on concerns that MSCI’s scoring system for investments gives low scores to Israeli companies and businesses that work with Israel.

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In what world does the company that makes diabetes water qualify as ESG?

Coca-Cola Must Face Suit Over Sustainability After Appeal-Bloomberg Law

The DC appeals court on Wednesday sided with activists in a lawsuit alleging that Coca-Cola made misleading claims about its sustainability efforts.

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In the end, it always comes down to the money...

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Defense stocks in an ESG portfolio? A profound — and controversial — shift seems to be underway-CNBC.com

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Defense stocks have typically been excluded from portfolios based on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors due to ethical concerns over their association with warfare.

In recent months, however, ESG fund managers appear to have become increasingly comfortable with holding defense companies — at a time of soaring industry profits and higher defense spending, as governments respond to elevated geopolitical risk.

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That's not the reason.  Back in the day we had a choice, we had socially responsible funds that had crap performance and we had everything else.  You could avoid investing in companies that you didn't like and sacrifice returns, or you could earn as much as you could and use that money to express your values.  Now, we have large institutions forcing companies to look beyond shareholders to "stakeholders".  To take resources away from making money towards initiatives that couldn't get done at the ballot box.  Basically to put politics over profits.  That's the reason for the backlash.

Kyle Bass Says Blackballing Oil Was Always a Lost Cause for ESG-Bloomberg

The hedge fund veteran and founder of Hayman Capital Management says the backlash that’s been building against environmental, social and governance investing in recent years is largely due to climate activists’ demands that fossil fuels be abandoned here and now. As a proposition, that was never tenable or even responsible, he says.

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DEI

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‘Pure Lunacy’: Robby Starbuck On Exposing DEI In Corporate America-Daily Wire

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US companies are rolling back DEI programs to critics' praise, but consumers don't agree, data shows-MSN

However, some critics and academics question whether DEI programs really work. In a 2023 study published in the journal Translational Behavioral Medicine, researchers at Boston University found that despite billions of dollars invested in DEI training every year, there is little evidence about what works and what doesn't.

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NY Times publishes guest essay saying DEI is ‘not working’ months after publishing essay saying it ‘works'-Fox News

Where the January guest essay insisted that D.E.I. programs are worth pursuing, the August one admitted that some "are too ideological" and "exacerbate the very problems they intend to solve."

Woke Companies

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Woke Disasters: 18 Companies That Misjudged Their Audience-MSN

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Bud Light Taps Anti-Woke Comedian For College Football Ad: Can Shane Gillis Help Beer Brand Win Back Conservative Consumers?-Benzinga

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Looks like a short if the 200 day doesn't hold.

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Fight Wokeness With Small Government-WSJ

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The better approach is to focus on corporate finance rather than corporate ideology. Florida last year enacted a law that did that. If you want to be a fiduciary of Florida state funds, you actually have to be a fiduciary; investment decisions must be driven solely by returns. Fortunately, asset managers across the U.S. are now speaking more about fiduciary duty than ESG. BlackRock, the nation’s largest asset manager, is even helping finance a new Texas Stock Exchange promising to be, of all things, apolitical.

Censorship

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Brazil Bans X, Outlawing Access to App for Millions-WSJ

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Robert Reich calling for Elon's arrest in the Guardian-X

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Election

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Personally don't put much stock in stuff like this. RFK Jr. has a ton of family members who have come out against him, as does Trump.

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Scary if true....

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Another killer video from Nicole Shanahan....

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Crime

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49ers first round pick shot during attempted robbery in San Francisco-X

Climate Change

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Jefferies came out with a study this weekend that that shows of the 1,500 climate policies implemented from 1998 to 2022, only 63 have materially reduced emissions. I would have taken the under on that.

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White House Races to Lend Billions in Climate Funds Before Election-WSJ

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The Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office was turbocharged by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which gave it hundreds of billions of dollars to lend to clean-energy businesses. So far, it has only used a tiny fraction of that capacity.

Biden administration officials fear that if Donald Trump is elected, the office would stop making loans. The program was largely dormant while Trump was president.

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Border

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Nancy Pelosi says the quite part out loud....

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This story coming out of Colorado keeps getting worse...

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Aurora, Colorado mayor suggests the federal government may have funded sending Venezuelan gangs to Aurora, Colorado.-X

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I thought the Governor said it was a hoax...

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Now Chicago?

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911 calls from Chicago of *32* armed Venezuelan migrants taking over an apartment complex in Chicago tonight-X

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Meanwhile, Poland handles stuff differently....

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Market

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Looked like they were going to open hot and sell the market off for a third day in a row, but in the end the bulls gained traction. SPY looks like it's forming a base and I would suspect that as long as this week's jobs numbers aren't bad (not sure what bad is though, is good news bad news, or is bad news good news?) then it should test the highs.

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From a buyers perspective I like QQQs better. You have a clear stop at the 50 day and more whitespace between where it is and the all time highs.

Meanwhile, the Dow is making all time highs.

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Looking at the iShares S&P 500 Growth (IVW) vs. iShares S&P 500 Value (IVE), value certainly looks stronger.

I don't think we see any great rotation and now that NVDA earnings are out of the way I would expect growth to catch up. That being said, I think you should have some way to get "value" into your portfolio. Personally, I run 3 versions of a mean reversion model that ends up sorting stocks by lower volatility being better. Most of the time that ends up spitting out value type names.

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