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Greening the BlueCollarDollar Investor
Years ago, before green became the color of more than money, my daughter asked be to help her put a first retirement portfolio together that suited here vegan tastes and socially responsible outlook. She wanted her investments to avoid oil or tobacco with no chemical companies who had designs on altering the environment or businesses that took a political stance in depressed parts of the world. At the time, the field was rather weak and the performance of these types of funds was not so good.
But times are changing. Green is the buzzword and the costs are coming down for many of these investments. Increasingly they are showing up inside 401(k) plan offerings giving socially responsible employees a chance to invest as their principles dictate inside their retirement plans at work.
In other words, being green has become easier for the blue among us. Here is a list of funds and Exchange Traded Funds who have found the new "greener" environment on Wall Street much friendlier.
Mutual Funds- Equity
Mutual Funds - Bonds
The unfortunate side to these offerings is the lack of track record. The ability to look at past performance, the tenure of the manager, and underlying holdings (turnover, expenses) does not apply to many of these funds. Some may be investing in companies that have ideas rather than products (much like the internet stocks were at the beginning of this decade).
It is difficult to argue against the growing popularity of Exchange Traded Funds or ETFs. They are still generally indexed to a specific market or market sector, sometimes very narrowly. These types of investments tend to be less diversified than I would like and should be left for the savvier investor. If you use ETFs in your portfolio, retirement or otherwise), keep in mind some simple rules: Use them like you would a stock. If you have a retirement plan in place, make sure it is fully funded before you begin trading ETFs. Keep the percentage of these types of investments at less than 25% of your total portfolio value. And the last rule, the more often you trade ETFs, the higher your commission costs (price in and out, even if low, adds up over time), adding a fee to the returns you might be expecting.
The following ETFs are so new and cater to such a narrow market, the performance on them is virtually unknown.
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