Why invest responsibly ?

There are many investment sites and newsletters out there and most seem to focus on promising you to make you money with little to no focus on how your investments impact the world we live in.

Any action we take, actually even not taking any action, affects our world. You can choose not to think about the consequences of your actions and stick your head in the sand, so to speak, or you can choose to be aware and act responsibly. If you feel this is true for your life, then you may agree with me that it should apply to your investments too.

The reason it does apply to your investments too is that if for example you decide to purchase the stock a company, you are actually become part-owner of that company. With shareholding come responsibilities which you need to aware of. Say for the sake of argument that you owned a property which you rented out to a third party: would you be concerned if that third party behaved illegally in your property ? Or that the use of your property affected the environment ?

Now, clearly owning a small portion of a large company does not make us relevant enough to meaningfully impact on its governance of its policies – but that´s why I believe it is important to pick companies (or in general investment ideas) which, to the best of our knowledge, have a similar ethical, social and environmental behavior as that with which we choose to conduct our life.

Stay tuned for the next blog !