Championing women in sports through advocacy and entrepreneurship

Santia Deck professional womens football

Hello, Equities News community!

My name is Santia Deck, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be a contributor to this vibrant community of over 35,000 subscribers, and to share my journey as a woman professional athlete, entrepreneur, and vocal advocate for the contribution that women in sports are making.  My journey in the sports and business world has been marked by groundbreaking achievements and a steadfast commitment to elevating women in sports. 

I’m known for making history… twice: first, I was offered the largest contract ever for a woman in football, and second, I broke barriers as the first female athlete to own a shoe company, Tronus. I view these milestones as not only personal and professional achievements but most significantly, steps towards challenging the status quo for women in athletics and opening doors for women in sports and business. At the same time I was taking steps to build a framework for young women in sports, I was taking several of the opportunities presented to me and unifying them into a model for success as an athlete and financial success as a businesswoman.  I was basically treating myself as the “test” to see if, and how, it can be done.

Like many, my journey has enjoyed—and endured—many pivots, twists and turns as I navigated an unforged path for young women to succeed and find financial rewards in an industry dominated by the well-deserved attention to men’s sports. Whereas women have long enjoyed recognition and rewards for their achievements in the sports women commonly compete in, such as tennis, golf, and soccer, there has not been as significant presence, participant or “player” in a sport like women’s football. I set out to change this.

Why football? Well, I love the game. I also love the game of rugby and successfully competed there as well. Playing in male-dominated and aggressive sports with my brothers and his friends growing up, it came relatively naturally as my successful track career was great training grounds to compete in the game. I went to college, Texas A&M – Kingsville, on a Track and Field scholarship. The life of an Olympic qualifying sprinter is intense; frequent injuries can easily end promising careers. I saw fairly early on that any success I may have pursued or achieved as a Track & Field athlete held limited financial prospects. Long before NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) opportunities elevated to where the industry is today, I knew I needed to set my sights elsewhere

I am also a fitness instructor and fitness model. I became known as the “Queen of Abs” on social media and rapidly grew a community of over 1 million followers. This community was not only interested in the workouts but also in following the journey to compete in the relatively unknown but growing sport of women’s flag football.

Yes, I secured a multi-million dollar contract to compete in women’s football, but I wasn’t one to settle for climbing just one summit. As I looked around for other mountains to conquer I asked, “why isn’t there a sports performance footwear company, designed and created, by a woman?”   While I might not have known much about how to manufacture a shoe line, I did have several assets in my favor. I had me as the brand, and I had a community of over 1 million members. So I launched Tronus. This leads us to the second history-making, barrier-breaking milestone in my career—I was the first female athlete to own a shoe line. I’m happy to add that we also launched several lines of shoes and colors and eclipsed $1 million in sales. 

My passion for sports and advocacy for gender equality has driven me to create “Winning Her Way,” a platform dedicated to profiling phenomenal female athletes. This platform is more than just a space for interviews; it’s a community where women can share their stories on their terms, celebrate their triumphs and address the challenges they face. By giving a voice to these incredible athletes, we not only acknowledge their contributions but also inspire the next generation to chase their dreams.

I am so encouraged by the growing attention that women in sports are attracting, the NIL opportunities to monetize their brands and the impact on the sports they play. It’s time to move the needle forward and create a more inclusive and equitable sports industry. 

Over the coming months, I will share these experiences in more detail: how they have shaped who I am today and my ambitious plans for the future. I’ll keep you updated on my business endeavors, impact investing projects, advocacy efforts and the progress being made for women in sports. Additionally, I’ll bring to light the companies and brands that are making significant strides in investing in and supporting the advancement of women’s sports. These allies play a crucial role in shaping a more inclusive future, and it’s important to recognize and support their efforts. So, stay tuned to Equities News as my partner in sharing all that I’ve learned along the way.

Join me as we explore the intersections of sports, business, and gender equality. Let’s celebrate the achievements, address the challenges, and pave the way for a brighter, more equitable future in sports. I’m excited to embark on this journey with you.

Let’s champion the cause of women in sports together!

~ Santia

 

Defining Great Companies: A Conversation with the Calamos Sustainable Equities Team

screen with stock market graphs

With experience that dates to the 1990s, the Calamos Sustainable Equity Team brings pioneering expertise to Calamos Antetokounmpo Global Sustainable Equities ETF (SROI),  an ETF designed to serve as a core allocation to quality growth companies. The team recently took questions about what they look for and why they believe their approach gives a more complete picture of a company’s ability to build shareholder value.

Q: What types of companies make great investments?

A: Our philosophy has always been to invest in quality companies, with our definition of quality consisting of two dimensions. First, a company must have quality financial fundamentals, such strong ROIC (return on invested capital), margins, and cash flows. But we believe it’s important to look deeper, which is why we also require the companies we invest in to have quality non-financial fundamentals.

Q: How does sustainability fit into this? 

A: Sustainability factors—such as governance, ecological impact, and improving human development—are examples of non-financial criteria. They give us another vantage point for understanding the opportunities and the risks that companies may have. We believe that having more information and using that information to make investment decisions is a better way to invest for the long term.

Around the world, there’s a growing interest in building a more sustainable world and improving conditions for humankind. We believe that companies that are providing innovations that are aligned with these priorities are positioned to capture tailwinds, in terms of increasing profitability and market share and avoiding risks. SROI and the other portfolios our team manages invest in companies that develop goods and services that offer other businesses the opportunity to lower their bottom line or produce new in-demand technologies or services. This includes a wide variety of companies—from those at the forefront of the circular economy to a chip manufacturer that’s capitalizing on global demand for electric vehicles.

Q: Give us an example of a company that checks all the boxes for you.

A: One company that we’re really excited about is Darling Ingredients, headquartered in Texas. Many of its innovations focus on recovering and collecting cooking oil and animal fats and repurposing them into feed and fuel ingredients. Darling also has formed a joint venture with Valero, establishing Diamond Green Disel, the largest producer of renewable diesel in North America. From a traditional financial perspective, Darling offers dominant market share, vertical integration and increasing margins.  On top of this, we see a company that’s been an early participant in the circular economy, providing sustainable food solutions and monetizing materials that would otherwise be wasted.

Q: Walk us through a key theme that you see driving opportunity and how SROI participates.

A: There are tremendous opportunities in the energy transition. Drive across the country and you’ll see firsthand the increased use of wind and solar to power America’s farms and cities. Quanta Services, also headquartered in Texas, fits right into this. Quanta is a specialty contractor focused on the design, installation and maintenance of energy infrastructure. It’s a leader in electric power and is at the forefront of delivering more resilient power grids. We’re seeing terrific organic growth as well as some key strategic acquisitions. We also love the way the company invests in human capital—earning numerous awards for worker satisfaction and safety.

Q: A tremendous amount of investor focus has been given to the “Magnificent Seven” mega caps. What are your thoughts on these sorts of companies?

A: Not all of the Magnificent 7 meet the criteria to fit into our universe, but as quality growth investors, we’ve found a lot to like in several of these companies. For example, Alphabet is dominant because it can execute, innovate, and manage risks. It has strong financial characteristics and capable management teams. Alphabet holds a dominant position in search and advertising, is consistently seeking new approaches and new markets, and is also a leader in reducing its environmental impacts.

Q: Let’s take on the 1000-pound gorilla in the room—politics. How do politics influence your investment approach?

A: That’s an easy one—they don’t. We’re fiduciaries of our investors’ capital and we don’t bring our politics into our investment decisions. Our focus is on creating a portfolio of companies with above-average growth potential and less exposure to the risks that can derail and distract businesses from building shareholder value. 

 

 

This article has been edited for brevity and republished with permission from Calamos Investments. To see the full article along with its disclaimers, please visit the Calamos Investment Team Voices blog.

The Impact: Christopher Barnard on young conservatives and climate politics

Young conservatives and climate politics

Christopher Barnard is president of the American Conservation Coalition, which was founded in 2017 as a vehicle “to bring conservatives back to the table and to start talking about climate solutions in a way that they understand.”

ACC has built a grassroots network of over 30,000 young members across the country at over 100 chapters. It helped launch a conservative climate caucus with 85 Republican members of Congress in the House.

“And we’re just working with them to show that this doesn’t have to be a partisan issue,” Barnard said. “Caring about the planet is something that we all do. And we can figure out solutions together if we just come to the table and that’s what ACC exists to help foster.”

Here is more of my recent conversation with Barnard from “The Impact” on FinTech TV.

Jeff Gitterman: So I’m obviously covering climate change and all the issues around climate change a lot on the floor. Usually, most of the people I’m talking to are on one side of the aisle, and I don’t get a lot of time to talk to people that are on the other side of the aisle trying to push these issues. 

Christopher Barnard: I think it’s great that you’re having someone from the other side of the aisle have this conversation. Because from my perspective, as a young conservative who cares deeply about the earth, about the environment, about climate change, I believe it’s just so important that the only way we’re going to solve our climate problems is by having both sides of the aisle at the table talking solutions.

See the full interview on FinTech TV.

JG: I think when people think about climate change, they think that it’s one touch point, fossil fuels. And they get divided right there on that issue. So what is your wedge into meeting with these politicians, both the Senate and the House? What’s the initial interest in them wanting to talk? And where can you get some movement or where are you starting to see that you can get some movement on issues with them?

CB: You have to come back to first principles. When we go and we talk to Republicans, we tell them that being conservative means being a conservationist. Those are two sides of the same coin. If you think about the father of the conservation movement in America, Teddy Roosevelt, so many conservatives look up to him. And if we just go back to those, that philosophical approach to conservation and just taking care and stewarding the earth, that’s really a conservative principle. And so that opens the door for a lot of Republicans and a lot of conservatives because that resonates with them.

 

Then in terms of solutions, when it comes to talking about climate change, you’re right, it’s not just about fossil fuels, it’s also about a bunch of other things. And we found, really, I would say four main issues that opens the door really to talk about solutions.

One is nuclear energy. Lots of Republicans really think that nuclear energy is safe, it is reliable, and it is clean, and we’ve been unfairly holding it back in this country. We should be allowing ourselves to build nuclear plants again. Another is we talk about the role of farmers and ranchers in protecting the environment in sequestering emissions and giving them a seat at the climate table. Often, they’re vilified in these conversations. We think actually that they’re the front line of helping tackle climate change.

A third one would be the fact that we have to compete on the international stage with countries like China. Of course, a lot of conservatives, but really more and more Americans in general, are skeptical of China and their role in all of this. And then the fourth and final point I would say is we’re having a big conversation in D.C. right now about permitting reform and the role of government red tape in holding back energy production, especially clean-energy production.

JG: Right. Especially nuclear.

CB: Right. Well, nuclear, but also battery storage technologies, wind, solar, hydro. There’s all these clean technologies we need that we just literally can’t build right now. And getting government red tape out of the way, there’s nothing more conservative than that kind of approach to issues. So that’s another area in which we’re showing that actually conservative principles can help tackle this problem as well.

JG: Can you talk a little bit about what are the behind-the-scenes conversations that you’re having? I just think it’s good to educate the audience because I think a lot of people hear talking points and then run with those talking points. I’d love to hear from you what you hear behind the scenes about talking points.

CB: The way that we approach this and talk with Republicans behind the scenes is this is a huge electoral liability for them going forward. There’s some data that’s supposed to come out of the University of Colorado next month, actually, that’s going to show that one of the strongest predictors of independents voting for Democrats in the 2020 election over Republicans was caring about climate change. And that Republicans are losing nearly half a percentage point in electoral support each year because of this issue.

One of the things that the party and the conservative movement is having to reckon with is how to not make itself electorally irrelevant to an entire generation of voters while making sure that the base comes along. It’s a fine line to walk, but it’s a possible line to walk and we’re there to make that happen.

JG: So what I’m hearing from you is that the biggest touch point is votes, as it is always with someone running for office. Not everyone is always running for office in Congress. So I think sometimes when you’re up on the Hill, you get different dialogues depending on if they’re in the middle of a campaign or not, but —

CB: Or if they’re a senator versus a House member.

JG: Yes, definitely. But when you talk to people, I’m assuming you get to talk to young Republicans on college campuses. What are you telling them about how they can get involved and how they can have an impact on some of these issues?

CB: We’re on over 100 college campuses and in communities across the country and we hear everywhere. There’s barely a young Republican in this country that I’ve talked to that doesn’t care about environmental issues. And so they are really the next generation. They want to see leadership from Republicans on this.

A lot of climate activism that we see nowadays, that’s like the dirty image of throwing tomato soup at paintings or blocking traffic or things like that, that’s deeply unproductive and turns a lot of people off, especially conservatives. And so what we empower our young members to do is be a productive member of your community. Go clean up the local beach or plant trees in the local park, host an educational event with local city commissioners or whatever it might be.

The second thing is we tell them that their representatives need to hear from them. The only way, to your point, that people that are running for office are going to take us an issue seriously is if they hear it from their voters, especially their young voters.

I think with some of that data that I just mentioned about how they’re losing voters year in, year out, I think we’re going to start seeing more of a sea change of how the party looks at this because the electoral necessity is simply there.

JG: Like you’re saying, phone calls, letters to your congressmen really can have a huge impact on where they come down on an issue. It’s great to hear you echo that.

CB: Part of what we do is we take our young members to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican members of the Congress. And that’s also really important because sometimes you can have anonymous emails or anonymous calls or like there’s no face to it. But if you take 10 young conservatives from rural Iowa to meet with a member of Congress and that member of Congress is like, “Wow, these are young conservatives that care about this issue and they’re my constituents. I’m going to care about this now.”

JG: That’s amazing. And if there are people on campuses that see this interview, can they join? Are you open for membership? How do they find out about your organization?

CB: Just go to acc.eco, And our membership page will be at the top there and you can sign up and we’d love to have you. We have resources available for young people to learn more, to get involved, to host events, bring members of Congress and exciting speakers to their campus.

Read more: Can Washington state’s carbon cap survive the political backlash?

The Sustainable Finance Podcast: “I’m Committed to Africa”

Amina Zakhnouf on The Sustainable Finance Podcast: 'I'm committed to Africa.'

The Sustainable Finance Podcast is a weekly program featuring conversations with sustainability thought leaders such as cleantech entrepreneurs, VC investors, CEOs, NGO executives, and creators of the ESG indices and analytics platforms.

EPISODE 250: I’m Committed to Africa’s Youth

Paul Ellis: Hello everyone and welcome to the Sustainable Finance Podcast. My name is Paul Ellis and I’m your host for these programs about developments in this fast-growing industry.

Amina Zakhnouf is an investment officer at the Fund for Innovation in Development, which is hosted by the French government to fight poverty and promote sustainable economic growth. Zakhnouf supported the creation of the Hellenic Development Bank in Greece and backed the Tunisian government’s efforts to create a favorable investment ecosystem for startups. Amina is also co-founder of I’m Committed to Africa.

Amina, can you pronounce the name of your co-founded organization for us in French for our listeners.

Amina Zakhnouf: ‘Je m’engage pour l’Afrique.’

PE: Terrific! Thank you very much for taking that off my shoulders. And this is a public policy incubator launched in 2020 with the mission of giving youth a seat at the table when it comes to Euro-African policymaking. Hello. Amina, and welcome to the Sustainable Finance Podcast.

AZ: Hey Paul, thanks for having me.

PE: We’re going to jump right into the questions that we have for you because we’ve got a lot to cover. We’ll start out from an ESG and sustainable finance perspective. How should we measure and consider African youth inclusion concerns in the private sector?

AZ: Well, there’s a few ways to go about this. But I think there’s three paths that can emerge from how you do it. And thankfully they work better when you combine them.

The first thing is to make the young generation part of the core investment strategy and so be able to invest in new jobs, better jobs for the youth in improving livelihoods, in increasing sustainable agricultural practices that the young generation can then partake in, as well as leverage in technology and innovative banking models that can allow younger generations to participate in the overall system that we’ve created. And of course, invest in youth employment dynamics that can also be your core investment strategy and business.

These can be part of any company’s mission. I’m very inspired by models like the ones that were developed by Village Capital, if you’ve heard of them.

PE: I have not. Can you tell us a little bit about them, Amina?

AZ: Yeah, it’s a wonderful organization that’s been working on something called Smarter Systems Initiative in which they provided their clients with a list of ideas and tweaks that they could make in their investment evaluation process, to increase or to better the gender representation of their portfolios and to lessen the gender gap.

What they provided is a more consistent, comprehensive and data driven system to make sure that they were not overlooking great opportunities for investment just because there’s a gender gap that’s overwhelmingly present in most investment systems.

And I’m wondering how we can create that for young generations. Access to credit, access to financial services, access to employment, access to investment. A lot of these things are about process and that takes me to my second point, make them part of company operations by creating more inclusive hiring practices, promoting diversity, and not just performative diversity but actual diversity within the teams as well as career growth opportunities within the teams.

Engaging youth in Africa.
Village Capital photo

I know that some countries fare way better than others in that system, but I am still kind of hopeful to see more initiatives to include more different people within an organization, which generates so much wealth not just in culture, but also in actual financial results.

And the last bit of it, which I think is really important, and we’ve been dabbling in it here in France, is to make them part of the decision making process. Having young diverse asset managers or investors or anyone working in the financial system being part of the decision making is really paramount to be able to transform the system.

So in France we created a model called mission companies, which are mission driven companies that do not just have profit alone as an end goal but also social and environmental causes as end goals. In their mission committee, which is kind of the shadow mirror of the board of directors, they can have intergenerational conversations.

I am part of one of these in an investment fund here in France, and you can see how powerful that becomes when different generations working in the same area or in different areas have structurally important conversations that lead to actual decisions. So if you provide them with the space to be part of the strategy, the decision-making process and operations, I think you can alleviate most of the African youth concerns by making them actors and not just making them subjects.

PE: What’s your outlook now on youth engagement in the public policy debates, specifically in financial sustainability conversations? We’re at a point in the capital markets now where there’s so much capital ready to be deployed around these kinds of growth issues across every economy on the planet. And one of these issues, of course, is how do we get that capital flowing and how do we get younger people engaged in that dialogue and process?

AZ: Well, I think it’s a really fascinating topic because we’ve seen more young people engaging in these types of conversations, but it’s always quite anecdotal or exceptional, exceptional enough for me to be able to name them. Which is crazy once you come to think about it. There are clearly not enough to be able to have actual structural conversations. It’s what I call the ‘speaking up paradox.’

More people are calling on the young generations to be part of the public debate. They are worried about these nonvoting, noncaring generation Z people that nobody understands, which is my generation actually. They are  scared of what’s to come with this new generation.

And then, the second  the generation speaks up we’re quite respectfully asked to not say anything that we’re not experienced enough to understand. They ask us to go for a walk and come back in a few decades once you’ve experienced whatever capital market conversation you’re in.

Sustainable FInance Podcast: 'I'm committed to Africa.'
Amina Zakhnouf

So it’s an open and closed door all of the time, which creates either the frustration to not want to engage anymore or, in my case and that of the people that we work with, creates the frustration to kick the door open. This is not a feasible situation and we want to be able to have conversations that are not just about ourselves, social media or climate change, which are the hyper youth topics.

I really do find it regressive and a bit laughable to be honest that we’re still stuck in these same systems. And so for us, the strategy that we’ve undertaken to be able to have more youth engagement in public policy is to, I wouldn’t say force it but to provide proof that we can. And so to support younger generations by writing policy that works in creating the spaces for conversations and destroying the mindset that there’s such a thing as too complex an issue, because there’s not too complex an issue.

There’s complex explanations to normal issues. And the second you hold that thought in your mind and that you can consider making all things accessible, you’ll make them more accessible. So we really are fighting a mindset, but we’re also kind of trying to create new content, new knowledge, new policy briefs, new conversations to make sure that there is actual youth engagement.

PE: I want you to know that our podcast platform is all about kicking the doors open and being disruptive, so you can count on us to be part of your team going forward.

AZ: Thank you, Paul. I’m happy with this.

PE: Amina, we’re now talking about the African youth population and the human population explosion that’s going to be happening on the African continent over the next generation. In fact a third of the African continent human population will be below 25 years old in the next half century, the youngest on the planet, by the way. How should the global financial ecosystem be preparing for this transition?

AZ: I think the in the same way that we’ve overlooked so many factors when we went through our first Gen Z massive demographic transitions, whether it be the job creation speed or the evolution of our capitalist markets, we need to take a step back and make sure that we’re taking into account all sorts of parameters, and one of them is behavioral, understanding how younger generations actually behave.

What’s their response to specific things, to a crisis, to inflation, to fear-mongering to new polarizing conversations. That should be the baseline of how we prepare for this. So it takes lots, in my opinion, lots and lots and lots of investment in education and skills in making sure that this new generation does actually find a job.

We’ve seen cases, for example, in Indonesia where the job market was not at all in coherence with the educational market, and we ended up with hundreds of thousands of Ph.Ds who were unable to find an entry level job, which created even more of a frustration because they were supposed to be at the top of the ladder in terms of competitiveness.

Make sure that we deconstruct the perception of what success looks like as a postgrad over grad and create new environments where people can feel safe in looking at different crafts, trades, and trying on different things, being temporary entrepreneurs and not being stuck in the same environments. And that will take a lot of financial flexibility. Actually trusting younger generations to make sure that they can use money and they can get money and that they can re-get money.

I don’t think this generation is specifically looking for land ownership or property. They’re looking for opportunity first and for personal growth first. How we finance these is the main question.

And then of course, with entrepreneurship, we need to make sure that those opportunities are inclusive, that there’s enough capital to make sure that we sustain it. That we’re not just letting them run into a wall. And those can be created with the level of, as you said, the capital that is currently flowing in the world financial system is absolutely humongous.

There are ways to level it correctly. And the one thing that I think should be considered across the board is climate smart investments. Making sure that these young people, when they get old, have a life they can live on a livable planet would be really nice.

PE: Thanks for joining me, Amina Zakhnouf, co-founder of ‘I’m Committed to Africa. We’re proud to join your team with our commitment to a healthy and livable planet for Africa’s youth and all the young generations of Planet Earth!

 

Read more: Climate change is spurring young investors to rethink their portfolios.

Money Life: ‘Big red flags waving’ even as stocks reach record highs

Money Life: 'Big red flags waving' as stocks hit record highs.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Chuck Jaffe: I am joined by Carley Garner, senior commodity strategist at DeCarley Trading. She is also behind trading commodity options with creativity. Carley Garner, it’s great to have you back on Money Life.

Carley Garner: Thanks, Chuck. Good to be here.

CJ: We are at a really interesting time when it comes to talking with technical analysts because we’ve got a market that’s basically at record high levels. And once you get to record highs, well, there’s no upper limit to put on the charts. Is there anything that you’re seeing that is going to be monstrous that lies ahead of us or can this market keep going higher? And how do we set a level for how high it can go?

CG: Well, you know, when traders and investors are in the habit of buying dips, it’s a hard habit to break. So obviously the markets can continue to go higher. However, I see some really big red flags waving. For example, I look at RSI, the relative strength index, and the RSI on monthly, weekly charts and actually even daily, to be truthful, is showing divergence. And what that means is while the S&P and the Nasdaq are making new highs, the RSI is not making a new high. It’s on an upswing, no doubt, but it’s not higher than it was in 2021, not higher than it was in 2018. And so we’re getting a downtrend in the RSI and an uptrend in the equity market. That’s generally a sign of trouble.

That doesn’t mean we turn around in 10 minutes or tomorrow or even next week. Sometimes these things take time and they can get out a hand on the upside before that actually works out as it normally would. It’s going to be rocky. It’s going to make people doubt themselves. But I do think that we are extremely overextended and I think time will weigh on the market says as we get a little deeper into the year.

CJ: Is that setback a necessary setback, a kind of recalibrate, re-coordinate move and then we can take the next step up? Or is that setback the start of something bigger and longer lasting? And does any of this happen before Election Day?

CG: This is going to be a very, very tricky year. Election years are normally positive regardless of how they turn out. There’s obviously a lot of moving parts here. And one thing I should also mention is we’re seeing a lot of things that look very similar to late 2021. And what I mean by that, in late 2021 Tesla TSLA stock was dragging the entire market up with it. We had crypto currencies going bananas, bitcoin going bananas, and we’re seeing something very similar now with Nvidia NVDA stock dragging the market up with it and bitcoin ETF blowing up the bitcoin market and those sorts of things.

So there’s just mass hysterical speculation going on. Reminds me of 2021. We know how that ended. It ended with a very sharp correction. Will this one end the same way? I don’t think it will, to be honest. I’m not bullish up here, but I don’t think the world’s going to end either. I think we get a nice healthy correction, which is exactly what we need.

That said, in the S&P 500, that could be something as low as 4,300. This run has been so dramatic that even a 1,000-point pullback in the S&P isn’t a game changer. It still holds all the trend lines, keeps everything intact, but it’s a nice healthy digestion of what we’ve been through.

CJ: Is there a logical catalyst? Is there something that will set this in motion? I mean, since you mentioned Nvidia, if Nvidia misses earnings or does something like that, is that enough at this point to be a trigger?

CG: The reality is we don’t know until we know. We don’t know what something will come along that we probably maybe aren’t looking at now that will be the narrative a month from now or three months from now, whenever it is. It could be something in the banking system. It could just mean like right now we’re being extremely spoiled by declining inflation and strong economic numbers. Maybe those start to finally turn the corner. You know, who knows, it could be anything.

But I find that in technical analysis, sometimes when the chart says that something is a high probability, it doesn’t always work, but it works more than it doesn’t. And usually we’re finding ourselves using the fundamental narrative or the story of the day to try to explain what already happened in the chart. And so I think it’ll probably be something like that. We won’t know until it happens and then we know.

CJ: In the meantime, how are you suggesting that investors stay involved in the market? I mean, if you see trouble coming, you want to sidestep trouble. But you also said we could still see this rally for a while before trouble hits home.

CG: Yeah, timing is, you know, it’s really, really difficult to pick a market top. And so what I would suggest is I’m a futures and options broker. Most people are not speculating in futures and options, and that’s fine. Most people should not do that. It’s not for everybody, but what the average investor can do is hedge their portfolio. Believe it or not, there are ways to hedge that will give you upside potential and take away a lot of the downside risk. And we call them risk reversals.

I’ll try to keep this very simple. In the e-mini S&P, there’s an option market. You can sell call options, like let’s say, you can go out to June, so you have roughly three months of a hedge for every roughly $250,000 in stock you have. If you sell — this is hypothetical by the way — like if you sell an out-of-the-money call somewhere around 5,300 – 5,400, you can use the proceeds to purchase a put option around a 4,800 – 4,900 strikes somewhere in that ballpark, depending on how aggressive you want to hedge.

Basically, that gives you free insurance. You use the market’s money because you’re selling a call to bring in premium and buy a put option. That way you’re buying insurance, but you’re not using your own money. The opportunity cost is anything that the market rallies above the short call strike price. You’re basically leaving that on the table, but that’s not such a bad deal. I don’t think anyone would complain about that.

To listen to the full interview visit Money Life with Chuck Jaffe.

Introducing the NEW Equities News: Transforming the world by investing in what matters most

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The Impact: Maria Lettini on keeping sustainability front and center

Keeping sustainability front and center in the investing world

Maria Lettini is the new CEO of US SIF — the Sustainable Investment Forum. US SIF is a leading voice advancing sustainable investing across all asset classes. The forum says its mission is to rapidly shift investment practices toward sustainability, focusing on long-term investment and the generation of positive social and environmental impacts.

Its members represent $5 trillion in assets under management or advisement and include investment management and advisory firms, mutual fund companies, ​asset owners, data and research firms, financial planners and advisors, broker-dealers, banks, credit unions, community development financial institutions and nonprofit associations.

“What makes US SIF unique … is that we have a core group of financial advisers and many of the investors who initially started this sector in this movement,” Lettini said. “So we want to definitely focus in on them, make sure we are delivering a value proposition around education, around highlighting the good work they’re doing to continue to move forward in this space.”

Here is more of my recent conversation with Lettini from “The Impact” on FinTech TV.

Jeff Gitterman: What brought you to take on this challenge, especially in the current times that we’re in as you took over.

Maria Lettini: I’ve been working in the sustainability space now since 2010. Previously, my career started out in finance and capital markets. I always had a real interest in sustainability. I started with the Principles for Responsible Investment to help grow that network of investors who are really trying to engage on responsible sustainable issues around environment, social, and corporate governance criteria. I moved on to work at the Fair Initiative, which focuses on food system risks and opportunities, again with institutional investors.

And one of the trends that I saw coming out of both of those organizations. and trying to sort of grow this understanding and raise awareness about sustainability factors, is that other markets around the world were really moving and embracing sustainability. And the laggard was always the U.S. to some extent. Now, you helped grow this very foundational group of sustainable investors here in the U.S. and that in part is part of the reason why we’re even here talking about it today.

JG: So there’s a lot of things you can tackle at US SIF. How does US SIF focus in on what the court mandates are that they’re going to kind of take on as their challenge or your challenge really as the leader?

ML: Well, we’ve been doing some fantastic things over the past 40 years almost. One of our key areas is policy. So obviously we want to showcase what we’re doing behind the scenes and also working with investors. And we have a growing team that we are looking to ensure that we’re ahead of what’s happening on the policy side. And we’re also behind the scenes educating policymakers on what is and is not sustainable investing.

Many of the people in the capital markets are familiar with SIF because we produce every two years the Sustainable Investing Trends Report. So when I’m looking into 2024 that it’s again a trends year as we like to call it. So we’ll be producing again another trends report. And also next year we’re having our flagship annual conference, which will be in Chicago in June.

See the full interview on FinTech TV.

JG: PRI, CFI Institute, GSIA, they all released a definition to responsible investment approaches, which finally clarifies and tries to harmonize existing terms and definitions. How does this work benefit the industry?

ML: I think this is frankly a long time coming, and it makes sense when you think about different global jurisdictions. Local jurisdictions describe certain investment practices in a slightly different way, all similar but different. And there’s different words and different vocabulary that each one of those local markets uses. So this was really important, and it’s particularly important in a time when communications matter and words do matter, and sometimes words can be taken out of context for sure.

It also makes it more difficult for newcomers to this industry. It makes it more difficult for pensioners, individual investors who want to understand and do more around sustainable investing when we have a whole bucket load of acronyms that we’re throwing around quite frequently.

JG: We’ve come off a year of real anti-ESG programming coming out of the Republican states attorney general’s offices. Thankfully, a lot of that hasn’t really gained much steam, which has been amazing. But I’m curious, when you look into 2024, it’s a trend year, you’re going to be covering trends in the marketplace, what do you see with your crystal ball that we can expect coming in 2024, and what do you make of the, at least for now, pre-election year, the dying down of some of this anti-ESG rhetoric?

ML: Look, I think lucky for us, perhaps this hasn’t taken off as a big sort of media focus. I think it started with a little bit of, ‘Ooh, maybe we can get on a bandwagon here.’ And it seemed to have really fallen flat. So our hope is that we’re not going to see a big uptick in anti-ESG movement. Active managers aren’t going to back away. And I think as we all understand, environment and social issues cover a great span that the constituencies of many of our congressmen are interested in, and many are happening in their own backyard.

And I think when we think about what the risks and opportunities are, I think everyone can agree that not being able to insure your home is an important thing to take into consideration and certainly is a financial material risk. Not having clean water to drink is an important part of how we should be managing our portfolios and access to water, high water risk areas, what’s happening with different high frequency now extreme weather events. And so all of that needs to be factored into our investment portfolios.

And I think more and more the broader community is understanding that we would be actually worse off if we weren’t considering those issues in our investment process. So I see it as everybody kind of coming together in a way, and maybe you’re seeing the community be a little less externally sort of forthcoming with what they’re doing, but certainly it’s not changing what’s happening at their desks at home.

JG: What do you see as the future? And what should advisers be focused on in this space, or how can they help support US SIF in the work that you guys are doing?

ML: I would say I am still optimistic this year, regardless of what we’re moving into in terms of an election year. In the absence of progressive policy that helps move forward sustainability, it’s been the investors and even the corporate sectors and industry who’ve continued to drive capital and assets and investment into the transition that we need. Without it, we’re not going to have a planet that we can live on, and we’re not going to be able to transition sectors equitably. And I think those are really important and affect people on the ground.

 

Read more: Women CEOs: An investment strategy that scores high on sustainability

Big brands agree to report and reduce plastics use

Big brands agree to report and reduce plastics use

Wealthy investors and asset managers wield a lot of power over the major companies whose stock they own or control. Every year, shareholder advocacy groups hope to exert that power for good by filing shareholder resolutions — 500-word proposals that might ask companies to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, or to disclose more information on their resource use.

Shareholders typically vote on resolutions between April and June during a period known as “proxy season,” named after the proxy statements that companies distribute to investors ahead of their annual shareholder meetings. These votes aren’t binding, but they can influence companies’ decisions and generate press around a particular issue.

This year, activist investors are notching wins even before the beginning of proxy season. Shareholder advocacy groups have already extracted a handful of plastics-related concessions from major companies — including the entertainment behemoth Disney DIS , the food processing giant Hormel HRL , and Choice Hotels, one of the largest hotel chains in the world. The companies’ new commitments include reporting on and reducing the amount of plastics they use in their packaging, as well as more closely monitoring hazardous plastic additives.

Activist investment firms like Green Century Capital Management — which manages over $1 billion in assets — must make a business case for environmental action. Douglass Guernsey, a shareholder advocate at Green Century Capital Management who helped negotiate the agreements with Disney and Choice Hotels, said the new commitments show that companies are waking up to the threat that single-use plastics pose to their bottom line. Read more: CEO group helps corporations develop purpose.

Between the prospect of more stringent state regulations, new lawsuits against plastic producers, and a global plastics treaty being negotiated by the United Nations, plastics are facing some potentially severe regulatory and reputational prospects over the coming years.

“It’s unnerving investors,” Guernsey said, and the scale of the problem is “just starting to dawn on corporate managers.”

The companies’ pledges also shed light on the shareholder advocacy strategy, which is not necessarily to sway companies through voting on shareholder resolutions, but to use the prospect of a vote as a negotiating tool. According to Guernsey, shareholder advocates almost always prefer to reach an agreement with companies through dialogue — they only file a resolution if they feel that it’s needed to keep the conversation going. In some cases, after a resolution is filed, companies agree to make some kind of commitment in exchange for the resolution’s withdrawal.

 Big brands like Hormel agree to report and reduce plastics use
Hormel Foods LLC photo

That’s essentially what happened with Hormel. A nonprofit shareholder advocacy organization called As You Sow started talking to the company last fall, asking them to take more responsibility for plastic packaging after their products are sold to customers. As You Sow organizes investors and asset managers around a range of social and environmental issues, and it persuaded investors holding nearly $2 trillion in shares to vote for the 48 resolutions it introduced in 2023.

Kelly McBee, As You Sow’s circular economy manager, said she had “productive conversations” with Hormel, but she still wanted to see more support for laws that make companies financially responsible for the trash they produce (known as “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, laws), as well as more investment in plastic collection and recycling infrastructure.

“That’s when we moved into the shareholder resolution phase,” McBee said. After As You Sow’s filing, Hormel came back to the table offering some additional plastics commitments, including a pledge to reduce its cumulative packaging use by 10 million pounds by 2030.

It also agreed to form an industry working group to advance policies that make packaging more recyclable or reusable, and to publish by the end of 2024 a report on ways for Hormel to become a more circular company, meaning one that minimizes waste. As You Sow withdrew its shareholder resolution in response to the new commitments.

“Hormel was pretty great to work with, they seemed genuinely motivated,” McBee said. Back in 2021, As You Sow had given the company an F grade on its plastic pollution scorecard, in part due to a lack of transparency around its plastics use and poor support for plastic waste collection and management.

Negotiating through shareholder action

The commitments secured by Green Century followed a similar arc. After talks with Disney and Choice Hotels, Green Century filed shareholder resolutions and then withdrew them in exchange for corporate pledges to measure, report, and set new targets for reducing their plastics use.

Disney had already been “ahead of the curve,” Guernsey said, with commitments to eliminate single-use plastics on its cruise ships by 2025 and to achieve zero-waste in its theme parks by 2030. But more measurement and reporting will increase transparency around the company’s progress.

Choice Hotels had already committed to phase out single-use polystyrene foam packaging by the end of 2023 and transition to bulk shampoo and other amenities by 2025. But an organization-wide plastics inventory will now allow the chain to set its first overall reduction goal by early next year.

Other commitments recently secured by Green Century and other investors include one from the retail chain Costco COST , which agreed in October to report plastics use across its Kirkland-branded products, and another from the beverage conglomerate Keurig Dr. Pepper KDP , which agreed in January to restrict its suppliers from using certain bisphenols — a family of plastic additives linked to hormone disruption.

Green Century is planning to unveil more plastic commitments — largely related to increasing disclosure and reducing plastics use — from about a dozen more companies in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, As You Sow has filed plastic-related shareholder resolutions at at least 14 other companies.

Not all negotiations between companies and shareholder advocates result in a mutual agreement, and resolutions that go to a vote can’t force a company’s hand. A 2023 resolution asking Amazon AMZN to reduce its plastic packaging, for instance, was largely ignored by the company despite receiving support from nearly half of its shareholders. “All votes on shareholder proposals are nonbinding,” McBee explained. “So even if 100 percent of shareholders vote on something, the company doesn’t have to take that action.”

Votes can still have indirect influence, though. If a company ignores the will of its shareholders, McBee said, they can sell their shares, reducing its valuation and access to capital. Companies that disregard shareholder resolutions might also make potential investors think twice about sinking their money into the company, or perhaps inspire lawmakers to write legislation forcing companies to take steps they won’t take voluntarily.

Plastics pollution still a challenge

Still, many advocates question the power of shareholders to effect systemic change. Even after their most recent pledges, companies like Disney and Hormel will likely continue to be large plastic polluters — not to mention their other environmental impacts, like the emissions associated with Disney’s fossil fuel-powered cruise ships and Hormel’s industrial meat products.

Some environmental groups pressure major investors to sell their shares in polluting companies rather than to try to change them from within. Others favor advocating for more stringent government regulations.

“[R]elying on shareholders to make corporations more accountable and socially responsible is misguided,” wrote Warren Staples, a former lecturer in social procurement at the University of Melbourne, and Andrew Linden, an corporate governance researcher at RMIT University, in a 2019 essay. “There are far more direct and systemically effective measures available to do that.”

Choice Hotels, Costco, Disney, Hormel, and Keurig Dr. Pepper did not respond to Grist’s request for comment.

Even shareholder advocates acknowledge their strategy’s limitations, including on plastics. Globally, two garbage trucks’ worth of plastic enter the ocean every minute, and plastics and petrochemical companies are planning to make even more of the material over the coming decades. To rein in the plastics problem, Guernsey said, “overall regulation is going to be important” — especially standardized requirements for companies to disclose and report their plastics use, as well as more EPR legislation and bans on particular types of plastic.

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

What the SEC’s first climate-disclosure rules mean for companies

What the SEC's new climate rules mean for companies

Sehoon Kim

After two years of intense public debate, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the nation’s first national climate disclosure rules on March 6, setting out requirements for publicly listed companies to report their climate-related risks and in some cases their greenhouse gas emissions.

The new rules are much weaker than those originally proposed. Significantly, the SEC dropped a controversial plan to require companies to report Scope 3 emissions – emissions generated throughout the company’s supply chain and customers’ use of its products.

The rules do require larger companies to disclose Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which are emissions from their operations and energy use. But those disclosures are required only to the extent that the company believes the information would be financially “material” to a reasonable investor’s decision making.

More broadly, the new rules require publicly listed companies to disclose climate-related risks that are likely to have a material impact on their business, as well as disclose how they are managing those risks and any related corporate targets.

After announcing its initial proposal in 2022, the SEC received a staggering number of comments from experts, companies and the public – about 24,000 of them, the most ever received for an SEC rule. The comments reflected both strong public interest in being informed about corporate climate-risk exposures and greenhouse gas emissions and also significant pushback, particularly over how much the rules would cost companies. Several Republican state attorneys general threatened to sue.

In response to the comments, the commissioners took their time to adjust the disclosure requirements, but the legal challenges may not be over.

specialize in sustainable finance and corporate governance and have been following the SEC’s climate disclosure plans. Here are some of the major issues that led to this change and the implications of the new disclosure rules as they phase in starting in 2025.

The climate rule’s unequal cost to companies

The most important reason for adding climate disclosure rules, as SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has noted, is that climate-related risks and greenhouse gas emissions appear to be financially material information demanded by investors.

Indeed, for the past several years, large institutional investors have been vocal about the need for more transparency and consistency in corporate climate-risk disclosures.

As the SEC has often emphasized, most large companies already disclose some of this information voluntarily in their sustainability or ESG reports, which often are published alongside their annual reports.

 

Since investors seem to demand this information, and many companies are voluntarily providing it, the SEC and proponents argued that it would be sensible to mandate some consistency in disclosures. Read more: Climate worries spur young investors to rethink portfolios.

However, much of the debate around the new disclosure rule has focused on whether it passes the cost-benefit smell test. In other words, would the compliance cost borne by firms potentially outweigh the financial benefits of mandated disclosures of climate risks and emissions that investors might value?

The compliance costs of federal disclosure requirements have been estimated to be substantial. When the SEC first proposed the rule in 2022, the commission’s own estimates implied that disclosure-related compliance costs would nearly double for the average publicly listed company.

Comments on the rule have since pointed out that there are also likely to be even greater indirect costs related to adjustments that companies might have to make in how they conduct their operations. These costs might also have broader implications for employment in certain jobs and sectors.

Given that many smaller listed companies do not have voluntary disclosure practices in place, the burden is also expected to hit companies unequally, disproportionately affecting smaller companies while large corporations see little impact.

Measuring greenhouse emissions isn’t simple

Another practical problem lies in enforcing consistent measurement of emissions and climate-risk exposure.

International groups such as the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures and the International Sustainability Standards Board have provided reporting standards and guidelines. But the measurements themselves are still subject to estimation and collection problems that might vary across industries and activities.

Moreover, estimating Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions separately presents significant challenges.

In particular, the difficulty of measuring a company’s indirect emissions from its supply chain – Scope 3 emissions – exponentially compounds the estimation problem. Reporting Scope 3 emissions also opens a floodgate of legal issues, as many smaller organizations in a large company’s value chain might have no legal obligation to disclose their own emissions.

The backlash over the challenges inherent in measuring Scope 3 emissions led to the commission’s decision to pare back that part of its proposed rules.

Many companies will also likely have to outsource the estimation and quantification of emissions and climate risks to third-party companies, where there have been concerns about higher costs, conflicts of interest and greenwashing.

How SEC stacks up to California, EU rules

The SEC is not the first to adopt climate disclosure rules. A similar rule went into effect in the European Union in January.

California has an even more stringent rule, signed into law in October 2023. It will require both publicly listed and privately held firms to fully and unconditionally disclose all of Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions when it goes into effect in 2026 and 2027. Since California is among the world’s largest economies, its regulations are already expected to have wide effects on corporations around the world.

Hardcore proponents of the SEC rule who wanted California-level disclosures across the board argue that Scope 3 emissions need to be disclosed given that they compose the largest fraction of all carbon emissions.

Skeptics of the rule, including two of the five SEC commissioners, question whether there needs to be any rule at all if things are inevitably watered down anyway.

Given the recent conservative backlash against companies focusing on ESG issues and the ensuing retrenchment by several institutional investors from their previous climate commitments, it will be interesting to see how the new corporate climate disclosures will actually affect investors’ and corporations’ decisions.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

Climate worries are spurring younger investors to rethink their portfolios

Climate worries are spurring younger investors to rethink their portfolios.

Last year was marked by a series of unprecedented weather patterns taking place across the world, causing irreversible damage to natural ecosystems and costing billions in damage. For decades, experts have exclaimed that accelerated human activity is directly impacting atmospheric temperatures, leading to more extreme weather outbreaks now becoming a more frequent occurrence.

Climate change, or more importantly, rising surface temperature isn’t a myth anymore. According to the World Meteorological Organization, last year was the hottest year on record, with the global mean near-surface temperature being around 1.40 degrees Celsius higher than before the industrial revolution. Based on MTO’s data, 2023 is expected to be the hottest year in over 174 years.

Warmer, dryer, and longer summer seasons aren’t the only thing humans are now faced with. Heavy rainfall in East Africa, more specifically in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya during October and November caused devastating flooding. In August last year, Canada experienced their worst wildfire on record, burning approximately 13.4 million hectares of land, and sending thick clouds of smoke across parts of North America.

More than climate: an ESG investing mindset

While environmental concerns may perhaps sit at the back of the mind for some older and more seasoned investors, younger generations are embracing the idea of creating more visible change through their investing strategies. Some cohorts of young investors, particularly Millennials (born 1982 to 1996) are perhaps playing the most significant role when it comes to ESG – environmental, social, and governance-focused investing.

Read more: Millennials and Gen Z drive demand for more ESG investment choices.

In one report by Morningstar, data showed that Millennial investors poured a robust $69.2 billion into sustainable funds in 2021, and more than $51.1 billion in the year before. This is an overall significant improvement compared to the $5 billion invested in ESG-focused funds back in 2015. Other research by Morgan Stanely found that 90% of Millennials surveyed were interested in pursuing sustainable investments, compared to more traditional strategies.

However, Millennials aren’t the only ones looking to change their investment habits for the betterment of the planet and environment. In fact, Generation Z (born between 1997 to 2012) are also among those now focusing more on sustainable investment efforts, looking to support companies that have existing ESG efforts and pour their cash into funds that align with their personal values. A survey by U.S. Bank found that nearly two-thirds of Gen Z investors were more open to allocating their portfolios toward causes they care about.

While the spectrum of these causes may be broad, anything from environmental to social justice and corporate governance, there’s a clear contrast between what young and aspiring investors care more about compared to older generations.

Compared to their younger cohorts, 16% of Gen X and 2% of Baby Boomers have said that they exclusively considered ESG factors when making trades or funding their portfolios. In the case of Gen Zers, nearly one-third of them are making investment decisions based on ESG factors, while only 19% of Millennials are said to be doing the same.

What’s more, in the same U.S. Bank survey, only 45% of Gen X and 30% of Boomers said they were open to taking on more ESG products in their portfolios.

The future of investing: Equitable and sustainable

An investigation by Bloomberg Media found that roughly 71 percent of global business leaders now believe that future investment decisions will be largely driven by ESG principles and that, over time, fewer investment decisions will be made without considering ESG policies to some extent.

More than this, younger generations focused on the potential of environmental, social, and governance investing could help to bring more innovative developments that could remove barriers for investors, increase the availability of ESG assets and funds, and help to reshape the disruptive change ESG-related investing can bring to social and political circumstances.

The larger impact these investments may have on sectors such as financial services, government, technology, health care, and environmental sustainability could help fast-track sector-specific development and help to better foster collaboration between industry and ESG principles.

As younger generations are stepping into the financial markets, making a difference and leaving behind a legacy are becoming part of investment strategies. That will drive a wave of change among companies, fund managers and financial institutions.

Instead of being focused on short-term gains, younger investors are looking towards driving change for the greater good, parking their money in investments that promote equitable and sustainable development and the uplifting of individuals. They are using their savings to become active participants in creating a more balanced and progressive global economy.