When John Bogle died in 2019, people around the world mourned. Bogle created the Vanguard Group and made the index fund mainstream. Index funds are investment vehicles that invest in a class of investments as a whole, rather than trying to predict what specific stocks or securities will do best. So an investor could invest in an index fund that represented American companies as a whole rather than trying to predict whether Disney, Apple, or Meta would have a better quarter.
ESG, or “Environment, Social, and Governance,” is the new feel-good buzzword in the halls of global corporations and megabanks. It’s a PR push to cloak morally disastrous firms in a veneer of social and environmental responsibility — lip service — but at the end of the day, I believe the market will speak.
