Market Insights

An Energy Crisis Reveals a New Twist on ESG Investing

ESG investing continues to evolve. The world is coming around to the notion that it is not so simple as shunning companies that have significant oil, coal, and nuclear energy exposure. The ongoing and deepening energy crisis in Europe casts an unfortunate spotlight on the perils of too quickly moving away from important base load fuel sources for electricity generation. At Dana, we take a more nuanced approach to ESG investing. While we believe that clean power will emerge as a significant energy source that will shape our world in the years ahead, getting there is fraught with challenges — at home and abroad.

We asked one of our senior portfolio managers, Mike Honkamp, about risk controls at Dana. His answer: by taking market timing out of the equation, he can focus on choosing the best stocks, quarter after quarter.

In our last post, we offered an overview of each step in our process and we promised to dive deeper on each one in future posts. Now we present the first step in building a resilient portfolio: removing market timing risk. Mike explains how we take market timing out of the equation with:

Asset managers are all sunshine and roses when the market is riding high, but in a bear market you need to understand how your manager is working for you. We want to share details about our disciplined investment process, because the market is experiencing high volatility and sudden downturns.

Our “superprocess” consists of quantitative modeling to rank potential investments and qualitative research into business models and management, while also integrating ESG factors. We add to this a disciplined adherence to sector and industry weightings so that we’re not unintentionally allowing human bias to affect your investments.

Is there a concern that ESG puts a political lens on which investments we make? The concern is real, as both regulators and pension funds have attempted to dissuade investors from accounting for ESG factors by politicizing the issues involved. We believe there is resilience to be gained from monitoring ESG factors, and politics have nothing to do with it.

With a 20-year history in ESG investing, Dana was one of the earliest entrants in the space. It all started with a request from a group of nuns.

Dana’s ESG story began at the tail end of 1999. We were working with a group of nuns who needed equity exposure. This group held zero equities in 1999, so we got them comfortable with moving into holding stocks, but they had some values-based controls that they wanted to place on their portfolio. They wanted their investments to align with their Catholic values, so they didn’t want to hold alcohol, tobacco or firearms companies. They needed to be sure there were no pornography publishers among their holdings. They’re nuns. It was a must for them and we understood.

Of the thousands of mutual fund managers in operation today, there are countless opinions on quantitative versus fundamental analysis. Many managers use a combination of the two. Let’s dig into both disciplines and touch on the strengths and weaknesses of each. 

Many Catholic investors utilize values-based portfolios to align their wealth with their beliefs. But there are plenty of other merits to Catholic investing. By aligning to what one believes in, investors may have more conviction, and are more willing take a long-term view with their holdings.

At Dana, engagement remains a core tenet of our ESG investing philosophy. We know clients don’t just want us to evaluate the risks a company faces due to environmental, social and governance issues, but to push companies, industries and governments for improvement. For larger-scale issues, these efforts are often more effective when a group of investors works collaboratively.

Over our 20+ year history in ESG investing, we’ve seen interest grow considerably, particularly in the past few years. As part of our own stewardship efforts to raise awareness, we have tried to arm advisors with the tools they need for their own practice, including items that could educate their clients on ESG investing.

Before jumping into 2022, we wanted to take a quick look back at 2021, sharing three of our most read blogs from the year. Many are still relevant today, covering the key themes and trends that continue to hover over markets.