
BlackRock’s decision to dump coal signals what’s next - evolve2k
https://theconversation.com/blackrock-is-the-canary-in-the-coalmine-its-decision-to-dump-coal-signals-whats-next-129972
======
nostromo
Matt Levine, as always, provides the most honest and direct commentary about
this. Here's the start, but the whole piece is interesting, as pointed out by
a reply.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackr...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackrock-
has-green-plans)

> Will BlackRock’s decision to send a strongly worded letter about
> environmental sustainability reshape how corporate America does business?
> Well, I remember two years ago when Larry Fink sent a strongly worded letter
> about how companies needed to make society better, and that too was
> supposedly “likely to cause a firestorm in the corner offices of companies
> everywhere,” and now, uh, same society really.

> Now BlackRock will send a strongly worded letter to CEOs about the
> environment. It will arrive on the desk of the CEO of, I don’t know, giant
> state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco? A company where, according to
> Bloomberg data, BlackRock is the largest outside shareholder. A company that
> did a bond offering last year—after the Saudi government murdered and
> dismembered Jamal Khashoggi, after Fink sent that letter about making
> society better—in which BlackRock was also a big investor. “We wanted the
> Aramco bond to be much bigger,” Fink said, way back in April, when his
> public-relations goal was to butter up Saudi Arabia. Now it is January, and
> his public-relations goal is to butter up environmentalists, so BlackRock
> “will make investment decisions with environmental sustainability as a core
> goal.” Next time a big oil company is looking for money, presumably that
> will change again.

> I could keep being cynical about this all day.

~~~
wtvanhest
Disclaimer: I worked for BlackRock for about 3 years on an investment team
(but its been a while and I don't have a dog in this fight)

BlackRock is a very simple business to understand. First, they only investment
money on behalf of their clients and they take investment fees for making
decisions on behalf of their clients (investing their money).

They break the business in to two parts:

Alpha: old school mutual funds, new school quant funds, real estate etc.
Anything where managers get paid big bucks to make investment decisions on
behalf of clients.

Beta: passive investment vehicles that blackrock tries to deliver for the
lowest price with lowest tracking error (i.e. deliver as close to what the
index returns as possible).

What BlackRock is doing here, is a VERY, VERY big deal. They are allowing
clients to now pick passive investment strategies which exclude coal or other
businesses that people find morally objectionable. What that means is that if
you care about the environment you can move your money to these new passive
investments. As more and more people do it, it will decrease demand for equity
in those companies and increase their cost of capital.

On the active side, they already had that feature, and many of their clients
already ask BlackRock to exclude investments from their active portfolios and
were willing to accept less return. (BlackRock has offered that for a very
long time).

I find very few things interesting that asset managers do, but I am going to
look at all my passive investments and try to get them moved over. I bet
passive funds without coal etc. will outperform while more and more people
move money from vanilla S&P500 to S&P500 without coal.

Eventually those coal companies may fall out of indexes all together which
will really increase their cost of capital.

Brilliant move by Fink, and I applaud it.

~~~
atombender
I'd love to be able to buy something that was exactly like VTI but scrubbed
clean of oil, coal, gas, and other sources of environmental damage.

There are some specialized ETFs like KRMA, but I don't know anything that has
environmental criteria that also follows the total market or some large cap
index.

~~~
badpun
> I'd love to be able to buy something that was exactly like VTI but scrubbed
> clean of oil, coal, gas, and other sources of environmental damage.

Show me one large company that doesn't do environmental damage?

~~~
DFHippie
This would be a cogent argument if there weren't degrees of damage.

------
coenhyde
Australia needs to exit the export coal business. We should go dig some other
rocks up out of the ground, we have a lot of them...

We are responsible for 37% of global coal exports. That's massive. If we halt
coal exports it would put a squeeze on the coal supply and that raise prices;
probably significantly. Coal power plants are already on thin margins. If cost
of coal increased for a sustained period (a few years) coal would be
considered unviable as a fuel source. We should see a lot of the plants close
down.

Australia always talks about its self as being insignificant and anything we
could do to help prevent climate change would have no measurable impact. This
incorrect relatively and absolutely, we are one of the largest per capita
emitters. But we are also the third largest exporter of fossil fuels.

This is Australia's opportunity to actually do something significant to help
address climate change.

[1] [http://www.worldstopexports.com/coal-exports-
country/](http://www.worldstopexports.com/coal-exports-country/)

[2] [https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-19/australia-
co2...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-19/australia-co2-exports-
third-highest-worldwide/11420654)

~~~
azinman2
"In 2014–15 mineral extraction in Australia was valued at 212 billion
Australian dollars. Of this, Coal represented 45,869 million, oil and natural
gas 40,369 million, Iron ore 69,486 million, Gold ore 13,685 million, and
other metals 7,903 million." [1]

45B is still a lot of money to remove from the economy. It's less than I would
have predicted (mining is only 5.8% of economy), but it's still a non-trivial
amount. And 45B gets you a lot of lobbyists.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Australia)

~~~
throwaway2048
How much money do you think climate change is going to take out of the
economy? Its going to be a lot more than 45 billion.

~~~
azinman2
Long term of course. But you still need power in the mean time, as well as
money and jobs.

You’re also assuming those who are good at mining coal could somehow instead
be good at both protecting the planet AND making as much money. That’s seldom
the case.

~~~
bamboozled
How many people are employed by the mining of thermal coal in Australia.
You’re taking like it’s greater than 10%. I can assure you it’s not as many as
you would imagine.

------
ogre_codes
At this point, this is one of those policies which is both environmentally
friendly and makes piles of economic sense. Even without clean energy
subsidies, coal is rapidly becoming a bad investment. The cost of running
existing coal plants has exceeded the cost of building new solar & wind power
plants. Over the next few years, demand for coal is likely to implode.

As bankers and insurers start to internalize this idea, the number of people
willing to continue investing, insuring, or financing coal operation is going
to vanish and the industry will collapse completely.

[1]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/12/03/plu...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/12/03/plunging-
prices-mean-building-new-renewable-energy-is-cheaper-than-running-existing-
coal/#6763c5631f31)

~~~
dv_dt
Next they should do the same with natural gas. The data on the investments of
nat gas fracking make it doubtful that it will pay back even the last round of
capital investment.

[https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/12/17/us-fracking-shale-
wood...](https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/12/17/us-fracking-shale-wood-
mackenzie-child-wells)

~~~
ogre_codes
As the cost of renewable power continues to drop, investing in extracting oil/
natural gas/ coal from the ground is going to make increasingly less sense.
Coal has the fewest uses outside burning for power and the greatest
environmental impact, so it's the most vulnerable, but oil and NG are going to
come under increasing pressure.

~~~
erikpukinskis
It’s a great stocking stuffer.

------
hodder
The decision whether or not to buy shares in the secondary market will make
little difference to existing coal companies (who are largely cash flow
positive and trade at near 25% earnings yields). Regulations are what matter.
All that secondary investors can do is increase WACC via lowered demand for
marginal primary debt/equity issuances. If you want to phase out coal, focus
on government regulation instead of secondary investments.

It can (and often does) make sense to invest in industries in terminal decline
as price paid for an asset’s cash flow is the primary determinant if returns
for the investor. You can buy coal stocks for 25%+ earnings yields. Even if
those plants are phased out in 6 or 7 years, one can make solid returns.

Indeed I have invested in cigarette shares in the past while wishing the
government would do more to stop smokers. The fact that I hold the equity
doesn’t change demand for cigarettes, and only in aggregate does the investor
appetite effect WACC. Someone must always hold existing shares. For every
buyer there is a seller and vice versa.

Lastly I should mention that metallurgical coal as opposed to thermal coal is
a necessary “evil” to smelt steel.

I’ve used this recent hate for coal investments(and weakness in NG) to take
positions at high earnings yields in ARCH and HCC.

~~~
flgb
> Lastly I should mention that metallurgical coal as opposed to thermal coal
> is a necessary “evil” to smelt steel.

Hydrogen can be used to smelt steel, and hydrogen can be produced from
renewable energy.

[https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/thyssenkrupp-tests-
use-...](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/thyssenkrupp-tests-use-hydrogen-
steel-production-bring-down-emissions)

~~~
christophilus
That is really cool. Looks like they’re targeting 2050 to be 100% hydrogen
based. That leaves 30 years of metallurgical coal consumption for one of the
world’s most progressive steel companies. I’m long HCC for this reason.

------
H8crilA
This is really just Wall Street generating volatility. Coal isn't going
anywhere in the next decade or two:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption)

I wish it died but it won't. Not yet.

~~~
ckdarby
Thanks for the link, sadly the data isn't that up to date with everything
happening :(.

Data is all the way back to 2015

~~~
tomlockwood
Yeah. Since 2015 for example UK coal usage dropped 60%.

~~~
philipkglass
American coal production has dropped significantly too, though not as
dramatically as UK consumption:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_States#Production)

and

[https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/coal.php](https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/coal.php)

From 896 million short tons in 2015 to 690 million in 2019. More decline ahead
in 2020:

 _EIA estimates that U.S. coal production declined by 65 million short tons
(MMst) (9%) to 690 MMst in 2019. In 2020, EIA expects total U.S. coal
production will decline by a further 14% to 597 MMst because of anticipated
declines in both exports and domestic consumption in the electric power
sector._

------
hughpeters
BlackRock is dumping coal because coal is a dying business. The climate change
point is just a convenient PR booster. If coal was still generating lots of
free cash flow we wouldn't see this.

With that being said, it's nice to see that the coal industry is losing its
economic strength. Hopefully other environmentally unfriendly industries
follow suit soon.

~~~
omani
the only comment that makes sense.

the whole comment section shows how much HN knows about markets and economics.
pretty much nothing.

a company wants to dump its position and people think they do it because of
the environment.

much hopium.

~~~
UserIsUnused
But you see, it's because of the environment that that it's not as economical
viable.

Green sources are becoming more and more cost effective because of lots of tax
money went into them because people care about the environment.

Eventually there shall be plenty of more green alternatives that are more
economically interesting than coal, but they only reached that place in
refinement because environmental focused measures took place.

~~~
evolve2k
I think you’re both way off base on this one. Index funds by their nature
pretty much replicate the index, it’s a mathematical play generally with no
position on dumping or actively positioning on any stocks.

This was always the climate problem, neutral is not ex-climate stocks..
neutral was maths, just matching the index.

Pure indexing was not taking a climate position.

This is why this is so huge, they’ve reset neutral and are challenging others
to do the same.

If they gain net inflows into their updated index products this will move
fast.

~~~
perl4ever
It would be stunning if they were changing all their indexes to exclude coal
or something.

They're just creating some new/modified indexes as far as I know. There are
already more ETFs than individual stocks, I remember reading somewhere.

------
andrewgleave
A great article posted in May 2019 by Saul Griffith from
Otherlab/Makani/Instructables on decarbonisation[1] and another posted
yesterday suggesting the idea of a "climate loan"[2]:

"The future can’t be built on lay-away; we need a loan. America’s strength for
much of the 20th century was inventing new financing models and exporting
those banking skills to the world. We need to put that to work once again,
this time for climate change. The key insight here is to extend infrastructure
financing closer to the home where the infrastructure of the 21st century will
sit."

[1] [https://medium.com/otherlab-news/how-do-we-
decarbonize-7fc2f...](https://medium.com/otherlab-news/how-do-we-
decarbonize-7fc2fa84e887) [2] [https://medium.com/otherlab-news/solving-
climate-change-with...](https://medium.com/otherlab-news/solving-climate-
change-with-a-loan-d1aac4b8259a)

~~~
t0mas88
The big handicap in this for the US is a president that doesn't believe
climate change exists at all. Will be interesting to see weather it will mean
the US misses the boat on the next big economic development and if so who will
jump into that void as a new world power. So far China doesn't look very
interested in climate change either and Europe is very divided.

~~~
nguoi
>So far China doesn't look very interested in climate change either

I disagree with this, I think it's easy to paint China as the villain across a
cultural, lingual divide in an attempt to make the case that one's own
obligations to reduce emissions don't matter. China has a carbon market now
and produces more nuclear power than any other country. Climate change is a
very real problem for a country with an encroaching desert.

------
adrianmonk
From the article:

> _contradiction between the company’s new activist stance and_

I don't think I agree with calling BlackRock activists. An activist investor
uses investment choices as leverage to apply pressure to achieve some other
goal.

But BlackRock's statement seems to say that they are doing this for financial
reasons. It says they're doing it because regulation (existing or potential)
is making those investments riskier. From BlackRock's letter (as quoted in the
article):

> _Thermal coal production is significantly carbon intensive, becoming less
> and less economically viable, and highly exposed to regulation because of
> its environmental impacts. ... we do not believe that the long-term economic
> or investment rationale justifies continued investment in this sector_

They also mention "ESG risk"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social_and_corp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social_and_corporate_governance))
later.

So in other words, BlackRock isn't using pressure to change the world. It's
responding to pressure and uncertainty. This is just market forces causing
BlackRock to keep its distance purely for financial reasons.

------
samsonradu
Highly recommended, Matt Levine's take on it:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackr...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackrock-
has-green-plans)

~~~
smabie
I don’t think I’ve ever read a Levine article and not been impressed. The
man’s a national treasure! Also, you can get his articles sent to your inbox
to bypass the paywalls.

~~~
supernova87a
How do you subscribe to receive those emails?

~~~
steveklabnik
[http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-s...](http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-
signup)

~~~
supernova87a
Thanks!

------
supernova87a
There are tons of economic analyses that show that these kinds of boycotts or
divestment efforts (usually driven by naive university students) rarely cause
any noticeable change in policies or operations at the targeted companies.

What is usually happening is that other technological or consumer behavior is
already leading to the decrease in business of some industry, and the
divestment push happens simultaneously (because of people's awareness) and is
merely a symptom of their final decline.

Take South Africa in the 80s, or the ridiculous grape boycott of the 90s, etc.
None of those symbolic acts led to actual changes happening -- those were all
consumer or political changes already in flight.

People create much more effect by voting with their dollars than by
symbolically calling for divestment. It usually turns out that there is
someone willing to take your place as a buyer when you choose to divest. It's
only through fundamental change in demand or supply that a business is
affected. Stop believing in the effectiveness of the feel-good boycotts. Even
Blackrock won't make a difference.

~~~
gersh
This isn't simply a divestment campaign. This is one of the largest
shareholder telling the companies to change their practices. There was a
business group that played a major role in negotiating the end of apartheid in
South Africa (see
[https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/center/private...](https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/center/privatelaw/document/makgetla_shapiro._business_south_african_transition.pdf)).

~~~
supernova87a
So, big shareholder tells coal companies to change their ways, or what?
Blackrock will sell its shares? Hard to believe. And even if it sells its
shares, someone has to buy them -- perhaps at a slightly lower price if they
dump a lot at once. But what change has it produced?

------
ineedasername
Wouldn't neglect from passive index investors simply mean that active
investors pick up such undervalued assets themselves instead? I don't see this
sort of divestment as fundamentally altering the price discovery aspects of
the market. All that changes are which individuals (or institutions) benefit.

------
thoughtstheseus
I'm curious who will take the other side(s) of this trade. If you can invest
capital in large chuncks (aka. PE/HF) why not just go long? If you can provide
enough capital to manage down the business better than where it's priced
now... that's an opportunity.

------
gzu
Yet China continues to expand use of coal power and mining their vast reserves
in the western part of the country.

~~~
Brakenshire
Nope, China’s coal consumption peaked in 2013.

~~~
agumonkey
I can honestly not grasp what China is doing. Between PV, Coal, hydrogen
industry.. do you have a synthesis to read ?

~~~
philipkglass
China's central government is pursuing multiple goals at once:

\- Cleaner air

\- More electricity production

\- Developing energy technologies with a substantial export market potential

\- Maintaining employment and social stability

The last goal can override the others, depending on current economic
conditions and public sentiment. Provincial officials may hew to the last goal
even more closely than the central government would like. Provincial
government also sometimes faces perverse incentives like getting tax revenue
from each ton of coal mined locally but no tax revenue from renewable
electricity generated locally.

45 year old Chinese coal miners don't like switching careers and locations
much more than 45 year old American coal miners do. China has also faced more
and more-recent civil war than America. They will build a bunch of surplus
coal plants and keep having coal miners perform make-work to fuel them if
that's the price of social stability.

~~~
Taniwha
I flew from Shanghai to Amsterdam 2 years ago, there was a point there where
there were windmills as far as the eye could see 100s and 100s, I tried
toicount and gave up .... looking closer they were clustered around open cast
coal pits and presumably dirty power stations - this was west of Beijing and
I'd guess a big source of their horrible pollution.

It's a smart thing to do, essentially they're leveraging the existing
transmission line infrastructure for coal for future wind

~~~
ourlordcaffeine
I wonder if it is the gansu wind farm that you saw. 7.9 GW nameplate capacity.
Absolutely massive.

And I thought the walney wind farm in the UK (just under 1 GW) was massive.

------
woodpanel
Whether one likes it or not, for a lot of people this will mean a good
investment opportunity.

I would also hesitate to label it a decision made out of moral reasoning.
Neither BlackRock nor (the majority of) their clients want to reduce coal
exposure because of that. They rather want to reduce their exposure because
they expect more regulatory hurting to come for those companies.

------
01CGAT
2016:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-14/norway-s-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-14/norway-s-860-billion-
fund-drops-52-companies-linked-to-coal)

------
proc0
It's starting to look like "alternative" energies might be more efficient in
near future anyway, despite climate change. It seems intuitive (but don't
know) that burning organic matter is not the most efficient way to extract
energy from nature.

~~~
bureaucrat
Efficiency is not the factor when considering energy source. People pay money
for stable electricity, not cheap electricity.

>b...but we can store energy!

No we can't. Energy storage systems are catching fires like Australian
wildfires and until it gets solved, no dice.

------
ericdykstra
Mass extraction and consumption of oil and coal will happen until these
resources are too sparse to warrant building new plants or maintaining
existing ones.

I don't really see any future where this doesn't happen. If you remove coal
subsidies, or tax them, then some of the energy production currently handled
by coal will change to oil, but once the oil becomes expensive enough to
extract, coal mines will open back up again.

This just seems inevitable to me. Is there an angle I'm missing?

~~~
jes5199
the cost of solar panels, wind turbines, and battery storage continue to drop.
They are already undercutting coal in about half of the world. They’ll depress
the prices of fossil fuels until it’s no longer possible to turn a profit on
them at all.

------
IndiaLends
There's an Indian equivalent called IndiaLends [0].

They also offer an Online Personal Loan [1].

[0] [https://indialends.com/personal-loan](https://indialends.com/personal-
loan)

[1] [https://indialends.com/credit-card](https://indialends.com/credit-card)

------
JohnJamesRambo
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback)

Hopefully this loop is starting.

~~~
kjhughes
Did you really mean to reference the sort of _negative feedback_ used
productively in engineering to maintain balance in control systems, op amps,
etc?

That concept is quite different from _negative feedback_ related to
expressions of disapproval.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
>Negative feedback occurs when some function of the output of a system,
process, or mechanism is fed back in a manner that tends to reduce the
fluctuations in the output, whether caused by changes in the input or by other
disturbances.

I’m referencing people dumping coal stocks so coal is less attractive which
means less coal is produced/profitable/used which leads to people dumping more
coal stocks.

~~~
variaga
What you describe is properly called "positive feedback" in the engineering
sense.

positive feedback -> doing a thing now results in doing more of that same
thing in the future

negative feedback -> doing a thing now results in doing less of that same
thing in the future

If dumping coal stocks now results in more dumping of coal stocks in the
future, that would be the 'positive' kind of feedback.

~~~
perl4ever
Which one it is depends on context.

e.g. A negative feedback loop could be

More coal -> more CO2 -> pushback on coal companies -> less coal -> less CO2.

------
funnygrass
It's to the point where ideals don't matter.

If you invest in energy you want renewables. Purely because of the economics
of it. The only exception is if you get some shady Adani deal.

------
spodek
> Taken in isolation, Sweden’s move had virtually no effect on Australia’s
> bond prices and yields. But the most striking feature of the divestment
> movement so far is the speed with which it has grown from symbolic gestures
> to a severe constraint on funding for the firms it touches.

A lesson in the potential value of individual action -- in this case and
individual nation, but an individual person can have outsize effects. I help
organizations change culture to pollute less. One company refused to consider
flying less. One sixteen-year-old girl sailing across the Atlantic opened the
dialog.

------
languagehacker
Has anyone here noted that coal is literally a black rock

------
gridlockd
Isn't this just virtue signaling? What difference does all this divestment
actually make towards the goals?

Surely, someone with less of a penchant for moral grandstanding will be happy
to buy up shares of fossil companies at a discount. Fossil fuel business
doesn't become less profitable just because parts of the equity markets decide
to value it lower.

You may argue that divestment prevents companies from rolling their
infrastructure. I disagree, if there's a solid profit to be made, someone will
bankroll it.

------
RobRivera
I think this is a great sign that the industry titans are recognizing the
market incentives to migrate away from fossil fuels.

------
qbaqbaqba
Natural Gas and Oil?

------
F_J_H
INB4 Short sellers...

------
there_the_and
It makes me proud of the Hacker News community that there have been so many
climate change articles posted at an increasing rate. This is a very important
issue, more important than technology since technology won't exist when the
climate collapses and destroys civilization. We need to make a serious effort
educating the public about climate change, so we need to work together to
ensure that, at minimum, the top article on Hacker News is always a climate
change story. It would be even better if we keep multiple climate change
articles on the front page at all times.

~~~
Mirioron
While I agree with you that it's nice that climate change related topics are
discussed, this is hyperbole:

> _more important than technology since technology won 't exist when the
> climate collapses and destroys civilization._

The type of climate collapse you're talking about here would have to be
something so extreme that most disaster movies would pale in comparison. The
defining trait of our species is tool (technology) use. As long as there are
humans around, our technology will matter. In fact, improvements in technology
are likely our only way out of the mess of climate change.

I think that hyperbole about climate charge hurts the cause. Some people will
believe you, but once they learn that you were wrong (or lying) they won't
trust you or anyone else on the matter anymore.

~~~
r00fus
There was an HN comment a while back about how hard it is for most creatures
to evaluate exponential growth. About how a petri dish colony took 2 weeks to
get to 50% full but then they all died off in the next 2 hours because their
growth was exponential and the environment static.

Once the climate starts worsening visibly, it will get much worse quicker.

The world is literally on fire now (california, australia, the arctic) - guess
what's lined up for the next decade.

~~~
jes5199
It will get worse, but maybe not as worse as we’ve been thinking:
[https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/climate-change-
worst...](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/climate-change-worst-case-
scenario-now-looks-unrealistic.html)

------
bureaucrat
oh wow, big wall street is dumping coal. _clap clap_

------
clSTophEjUdRanu
It's alarming that a company I've never heard of has 7 trillion dollars.

~~~
dmoy
Blackrock is one of the biggest group of funds. Some of them are branded as
iShares.

If you've done any comparison shopping on index funds for investments, you
almost certainly ran across blackrock funds even if you didn't know it.

~~~
perl4ever
Yes, but people are talking about a decision about _active_ funds, not indexes
where most of the money is.

It would be earthshaking if they decided to substitute their judgment for the
market and take coal stocks out of all the index funds. But that's not what is
being reported.

The reporting seems to be kind of willfully implying a connection that isn't
there to get clicks, which I guess is basically all journalism these days.

------
waffle_ss
BlackRock and Vanguard are supposed to be the places where people can put
their money into low-overhead index funds that more or less track the market.

It's fine if they want to create new products that exclude certain types of
businesses, to give investors more choices.

But what I don't like is them turning this gigantic pool of money into a spear
to jab businesses with their pet political opinions. That's not the role
investors entrust their money with them for - they're expected to be more of a
passthrough type of management.

They've previously done this same thing with gun manufacturers and retailers,
who are doing very well, so you can't make the argument some in this thread
are making with fossil fuels being a dead end compared to an alternative
(renewables).

So whose next on their woke chopping block? Monsanto for killing the bees?
Boeing, Raytheon, et al for supporting the military? Facebook, Twitter, et al
for the harmful effects of social media? All the software companies like
GitHub that support ICE or the next distasteful federal agency? Like they did
with guns, divestment in any company you don't like can be couched in deep
concerns over "risk."

I think there's a great opportunity here for someone to start a fund that gets
back to the basics of passive index funds, instead of chasing woke asspats
like the activist board of BlackRock and Vanguard. I'd certainly move my
money.

~~~
perl4ever
You probably don't own any shares of an _active_ fund from Blackrock or
Vanguard. They're pretty obscure. So you can go back to sleep.

