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One more thing - The GiveWell Blog

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“I’ve got a great new charitable venture. What I’m going to do is separate the S&P 500 into socially responsible and socially irresponsible companies. I’ll go long the good companies and short the bad ones.* Of course, I’ll be doing this for altruism, not out of any knowledge of the companies – so I might lose money – but it’s charity! Any losses will be covered by grants.” *(This means betting on the good companies to outperform the bad–it has the same impact on prices as if you sold the bad companies’ stocks and bought the good companies’ stocks.) So … does this idea sound as crazy and worthless to you as it does to me? Because it’s exactly equivalent to what people are calling for foundations to do: spend effort going through their investment portfolios so that they may shift their capital from the socially irresponsible investments to the socially responsible investments. It would be different if someone could construct a well-respected social responsibility index, and convince a l

This post is more than 19 years old “I’ve got a great new charitable venture. What I’m going to do is separate the S&P 500 into socially responsible and socially irresponsible companies. I’ll go long the good companies and short the bad ones.* Of course, I’ll be doing this for altruism, not out of any knowledge of the companies – so I might lose money – but it’s charity! Any losses will be covered by grants.” * (This means betting on the good companies to outperform the bad–it has the same impact on prices as if you sold the bad

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