Great article in the Herald Tribune about investor activism becoming more effective.

The NYT has a great article about the monetary value of a tree. The bottom line: for every dollar spent on trees, New York City receives $5.60 in benefits (impact on local property values, absorptions of carbon dioxide, reduction in energy consumption as a result of additional shade cover, etc).

Shareholder Push Results in Apple Inc.'s Aggressive Computer 'Take Back' Program - Its nice to see shareholder pressure in action. Apple's web page about it provides a nice overview, as well as another page about how they've adopted some metrics from Dell. HP and Dell have similar initiatives.

Why Warren Buffet can't stop the Darfur genocide - Interesting take on shareholder activism.

Carbon trading overhaul increases green incentives - The stakes are higher for EU firms looking to trade carbon credits.

KLD ANNOUNCES US GLOBAL CLIMATE INVESTMENT - A new index of top 100 companies, "...whose activities demonstrate the greatest potential for mitigating immediate and long-term causes of climate change."

Yahoo has published their top 100 green cars. Personally, I plan to go car-less in the next month (more about that in later posts), so I'm not really interested in buying another car. However, I find Yahoo's ranking system quite interesting. They apply the concept of "lifecycle assessment ... the scientific method for adding up all of the environmental damages associated with a product".

They include the major pollutants in the rating system (which are produced during manufactoring as well as actually operating the car):

• Greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2)
• Fine particles (particulate matter, PM)
• Nitrogen oxides (NOx)
• Hydrocarbons (HC)
• Carbon monoxide (CO)

You may have this desire to sell your car and go green and buy the one at the top of the list: the Honda Civic Hybrid. But its still worth thinking about the financial implications.

I was curious what this would mean to my retirement if I went and bought this car today. I used yahoo's estimates for the cost of ownership, but removed anything related to financing (to keep it simple). I stuck to just using their costs for fuel, maintenance, insurance, and repairs for five years.

The total cost of ownership for me $14,089, plus the cost of car, at $23,650, totals out to $37,739.

So now the fun part: invest that into the market with an average return of 7% until I retire (37 years for me), and I end up with $461,307 (I used our interest calulator to compute this)!

If you want to play around with the numbers a little more, check out this site - they include the costs to finance, as well as other variables.

I think I'll keep riding my bike to work....

The New York Times has a fluff piece this past week on Socially Conscious Investing. You won't find anything new or exciting in the article, however, one of the investors that they profile points out some common questions:

• My fund manager or close friend that I trust says to steer clear from S.C.I. because of lower returns. Is this really true?
• I cannot find much information on S.C.I.
• I don't know anyone else that is investing in S.C.I. other than super rich people in magazine and newspaper articles. Is it prudent for me to invest in S.C.I. as well?
  

Are there any other questions that come to mind when switching to S.C.I.? Do people find these to be true? I'm curious about your comments on this issue.

The recent dip in the stock market is hard to ignore: its scary to think that it could be a sign of something bigger. It can turn your stomach over if you already have a large chunk of your retirement invested or if your're about to dip your toes into the pond. Either way, it's hard not to hover your mouse over the "Sell" button everytime it happens.

I've been interested in the psychology behind this anxiety. I found an interesting discussion about how the media can add to the hysteria, thus sending people logging into their E*Trade accounts. Like all stories in the media, they tend to paint a very simplistic narrative of an otherwise complicated issue:

"...There's a tendency to talk about the stock market like it's the home team, so that when the stock market's up we should all be out and celebrating; when it's down, this is bad news, we should all be dour and glum." -Dean Baker of the American Prospect from On The Media

Mr. Baker has a good point. The truth is (as he goes on to point out), that most americans do not have any money invested in the stock market. Not only that, but with rising personal debt and stagnant wages for the past twenty five years, there isn't much cash left to invest anywhere.

However, the most important thing Mr. Baker points out is quite simple: focus your attention on economic news, not market news. I asked myself when I was rushing to log into my Fidelity account, "Am I thinking of selling because everyone else is? (market news) or am I considering it based on hard economic data? (economic news)."

Baker uses a great example: the stock market crash of 1987. He mentions that if you read the news around the time leading up to the crash, there really isn't much bad economic news. In addition, the economy goes on to perform very well for the next couple of years.

Link Roundup for March 3, 2007:

TXU still working hard to be a green coal company. Will it be able to turn over a new (green) leaf?

Interesting article about the Gates foundation and the recent investigation into their investment strategies... http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/2225.html