SRI is an acronym for Socially Responsible Investing. According to one source over $2 trillion of money managed professionally is currently being invested according to some type of “social criteria”. There are now hundreds of different mutual funds utilizing social screens to select investments. By definition SRI funds try to integrate social and environmental objectives, community investing, and shareholder action into their investment strategies. Of course, Socially Responsible Funds can still means different things to different people and to different funds and index managers as well.
Try to make sure that you are involved in SRIs that are right for you but figuring out what SRIs include can vary. Some funds will exclude any stock whose company might be involved in animal testing. Some funds put more emphasis on how a company treats its employees. This process of inclusion or exclusion is called screening, and each fund has its own screening criteria. Knowing the screening criteria can be a big help in deciding which fund is right for your style of investment.
Well known SRI indexes
The completion of the series extended the availability of information on Socially Responsible Investments to cover 90 percent of the worlds financial markets. According to FTSE The FTSE4Good index series was created to provide SRI Investors with an independent and accurate tool to measure the performance of companies meeting international CSR standards. FTSE for good and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index are the most commonly known SRI indexes.
Dow Jones Sustainability Group Indexes
Companies have been screened by the Dow Jones Sustainability Group Indexes based on certain things since 1999. The foundation for them is a cooperation.
Does SRI lower your investing returns?
There is plenty of debate among expert whether Investing using SRI funds provides you with lower returns and unfortunately there is no clear answer to that question. In general SRI equity Mutual Funds have held their own in recent years. According to one SRI Fund company out of 16 of their funds 14 received top marks from well known mutual fund rating company. A recent article on the site of this same well know mutual fund rating company noted that of 38 SRI funds that it tracked, 9 had beaten the S&P 500 index over the previous five years (as of May 2000). So can we draw any sweeping conclusions based on these results… no we cannot, but, the results do look promising and it will be interesting to see how SRI funds do in the future.
John Morris
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/what-are-sri-funds-59383.html
what would you do to ensure that our social security system has funds 50 years from now?
What would it invest in?Who would control the fund? How would you allocate the fund amongst investors?
Anybody want to admit maybe President Bush was a man of vision???
He asked for bipartisan input into the social security issue, and the libs painted him as the man who was going to steal our social security.
Surely you don’t expect anyone to be able to answer this question quickly, , while those in congress who should have had the political courage to address this issue. have been burying their heads in the sand for many. many years.
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Most importantly I think you would have to raise taxes and cut spending. There’s really no way around it. The only way to catch up a system that is this upside down would be to either increase the amount of money going into it, or else take on much bigger risks with the investments. The problem is that it is hard to invest in risky assets when you have as much money to throw around as the US government. The more risky assets with higher returns are usually small in quantity, and such a large infusion of government funds would send their prices so high they would no longer offer a rate of return that compensates the US taxpayer for such a large risk.
I think the government will have to rely on the future earnings of younger American workers. If we are somehow able to turn ourselves around so that we have a surplus again, we may over time be able to save extra cash which could be invested in foreign government bonds or domestic infrastructure projects such as renewable energy, construction, or technology.
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The best way to maintain the viability of the Social Security system is to promote economic growth. The larger the GDP, the bigger the pool of wealth to support the elderly and those in need. The smaller the pie, the uglier the squabbling over how it will be split up.
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http://blogger.uncleleosden.com/2010/01/strategy-for-10s-add-value-to-america.html