Like It or Not, You Probably Own Tesla Stock

But there IS something you can do about it.

There’s nothing wrong with desiring wealth. The reason I desire it for myself, my loved ones, and for you, is because it gives us power:

💪 Power to leave a harmful situation.

👩🏽‍🎓 Power to pursue a professional passion.

💗 Power to live an incredibly satisfying life.

⚖️ Power to change unjust policies (and create better ones).

I do not wish for us to use our power to transform our country into a massive entity that exists only to serve a tiny, inner circle of billionaire White Men. But over the past several months, we’ve watched how wealth can do just that.

In response, many Americans have revolted in different ways- some have shutdown their facebook accounts, others have quit Amazon. Consumer hatred toward Elon Musk has contributed to plummeting resale value of Teslas (and, unfortunately- to the rise of vandalized personal property). Capitalism gives us the opportunity to protest the behavior of companies. But how effective are these protests, really?

As consumer activists, we can reform our spending- but we shouldn’t overlook our investing.

If you have a brokerage or a retirement account, you’re probably invested in funds that track various markets, especially the US stock market. The problem is, the companies that dominate the holdings of the majority of US stock market funds are exactly the companies that people have been boycotting.

The prominent billionaires benefitting from recent policy changes are also the biggest beneficiaries of your 401(k)’s fund purchases. Image source: The Associated Press

My guess is that despite the efforts to cancel Elon, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, most folks probably have a lot of money invested in those very companies. In our responsibly-intentioned quest for wealth, we are literally funding the wealth of these billionaires.

This article isn’t meant to frustrate you out of the stock market (please DON’T take this information as a sign that you should duck out of capitalism!). Remember- if you are not investing and building wealth, then you will have less of that power I mentioned before. In order to build that power for good, we need you in this fight; we need your capital to grow!

This article is meant to give you a reminder to review your portfolio and see where you might have the opportunity to align your assets with your values. If you feel disgust when you see headlines about Bezos or Musk, you might not want the funds in your brokerage and retirement accounts to support them.

“VOO” is a common low-cost index fund that tracks the S&P 500 (it’s one we’ve mentioned many times as an example of a low-cost fund). If you have a brokerage or retirement account, you are most likely invested in a fund like this, and most likely have TSLA (Tesla) as a holding.

How to See What You’re Invested In

When you look at your account “Positions” or “Portfolio” or “Holdings” (this terminology will vary based on your specific account platform), you’ll see the ticker symbols (the four-five capitalized letters) of the stocks, bonds, or funds that you are invested in. Either from within your account platform, or if you google that ticker and go to any major financial platform (Yahoo Money, Morningstar, MarketWatch, etc.), you can find out more about that fund, including its “Holdings”. This is the list of all companies the fund is invested in.

Then What?

It’s your choice! You don’t have to do anything. Or, if you feel like you want your money to match your values, you can decide to make some changes. There are alternatives for our money if we don’t want to fund that inner circle of billionaire White Men. This is where impact investing comes in, and it’s a big world. If you haven’t stepped into it before, the most important thing I want you to know is this: just like with any investing, take it one small step at a time. Don’t try to change your whole portfolio at once, and make sure you use all the new information you have to empower you- not to make you feel overwhelmed and discouraged. In full transparency: I started my impact investing journey a few years ago and my portfolio still has assets that do NOT align with my values (including some remaining VOO shares!). It’s a long process, but progress > perfection! 😅

Impact Investing — the Tip of the Iceberg

There are opportunities for us to invest with our values in so many different parts of our portfolio. I’ll barely dive into the details of impact investing here, but what I will do is start with a basic outline of opportunities we have.

It makes a lot of sense to talk about impact investing opportunities in the same way we introduce general investing asset classes. If you’ve taken our Investing 101 course, then you’re familiar with these concepts:

Cash/Cash Alternatives

This is the most liquid, and least volatile of your investments. Think of your savings or checking account, money market funds, HYSAs. We can take a major first step in investing with our values by choosing a bank that invests in companies, organizations, and/or communities we want to support. If you want to see how your bank uses your money, this is a great site that will show you!

Fixed Income

This asset class is less liquid than cash, but way less volatile than equities. It’s a great way to have consistent, even if not super high returns. Think: bonds/CDs/private debt. Imagine if you could fund projects that you believe will create positive impact- and get paid when they pay you interest (and then get your initial investment back at the end of the loan). Most bonds are corporate bonds, and don’t give us the warm-and-fuzzies about their outcomes (which are typically just to scale their business in order to make their executives richer). It’s a bit harder to find competitive returns for impact bonds, and I’ve yet to know about a platform that consolidates various impact bond opportunities, but here are some companies that offer such opportunities to retail investors (like us): Praxis, Domini, Calvert, just to name a few.

Equity

This is the most volatile asset class, and can be the riskiest, but also can yield the highest returns. Just as with the other asset classes, you have the opportunity to invest in public equity (stock market) or private equity (think: syndications, angel investments, venture capital, etc.). The public equity class is what today’s newsletter dives into. VOO, as an example, is a public equities fund that may or may not align with your values, based on what companies it invests in. If it doesn’t, there are other funds that aim to track certain markets or company sizes, but are intentional about NOT investing in companies that may do things like: repeatedly violate workers’ rights, invest in fossil fuels, have socially or environmentally unsustainable practices, etc. Invest Your Values (by As You Sow) is a free tool that allows you to see how different funds rank according to a set of values-based criteria. You can also view the performance and expense ratio of each fund.

The Bottom Line

Wealth gives us power, and thanks to Spiderman, we all know that with great power comes great responsibility. It is true that divesting from what we believe are evil corporations, and investing in more positive, impactful companies or organizations might cost us some returns. Not always- but, in the scenarios where it does, it’s up to us to decide if it’s worth it. What are our values- and how much are they worth it to us? When we see the possibility of impact investing, we can literally put a price on them.

*NOTE: none of this is advice to buy or sell securities.