Why momentum investors don’t help fight climate change

The rise and fall of the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF.

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Photo: Thanapat Pirmphol/Pixabay.

(Mark Hulbert, an author and longtime investment columnist, is the founder of the Hulbert Financial Digest; his Hulbert Ratings audits investment newsletter returns.)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (Callaway Climate Insights) — We now know that the astounding 2020 performance of clean energy funds was not propelled by investors interested in saving the planet.

That was the year when the S&P Global Clean Energy index produced a total return of 142.1%, far outpacing the 18.4% total return of the S&P 500 itself.

For your investing to have any real impact on companies’ climate-related policies, you must reduce their cost of capital. Otherwise there would be no point.