Insights for investors and financial professionals
June 15, 2020
What's in your investment fund?
3 min read
Find out what's included in an ETF, mutual fund or index fund before buying. Funds can include thousands of individual stocks that may or may not align with your values.
What are you really buying when you invest in an ETF, mutual fund, or index fund?
A little research can help you understand what stocks are included in a fund and whether they align with your values.
Take 3 of the most-traded ETFs, for example, SPY tracks the S&P 500 Index and holds 505 well-diversified stocks. When you buy SPY, you get:
2 tobacco companies
1
14 weapons companies
2
163 companies that have received customer or product fines in the last 3 years
3
236 companies that have received worker-related fines in the last 3 years
4
99 companies that have received environmental fines in the last 3 years
5
26 oil companies
Like other products, funds should tell you what you're buying before you buy them.
Ethos helps you understand what's behind ETFs, index funds and mutual funds. When you link an account through Ethos we show you what's included in your funds.
We also aggregate all of the companies you hold through all of your funds, so you see a single picture of your total investment in individual companies.
Knowing what you're investing in shouldn't be hard, and we all want to make decisions based on what we care about.
Note 2
Ethos considers tobacco companies to be any that derive more than 15% of total revenue from tobacco-related sales.
Note 3
Ethos considers weapons companies to be any that derive at least $1B revenue or 10% of total revenue from arms sales.
Note 4
Includes customer- or product-related fines from the US government in the last 3 years. Fines tracked by the Violation Tracker of Good Jobs First.
Note 5
Includes worker-related fines from the US government in the last 3 years. Fines tracked by the Violation Tracker of Good Jobs First.
Note 6
Includes environment-related fines from the US government in the last 3 years. Fines tracked by the Violation Tracker of Good Jobs First.
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