The Truthiness of ESG Criticism
Posted In: Economics, Equity Investments, Performance Measurement & Evaluation, Portfolio Management
There are two often-repeated critiques of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing that I really can't stand. They have the quality of truthiness about them and are what academics sometimes call "as if" arguments. For my younger readers, the term truthiness was coined by Stephen Colbert during his days hosting The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Wikipedia defines it as follows:
"Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts."
One truthiness-infused argument in investing is that the rise of index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) makes markets less efficient and causes stock market bubbles. This might be true if index investors accounted for the vast majority of assets under management (AUM). But today, index funds manage less than 30% of all assets. The index-funds-create-bubbles claim simply ignores this fact or assumes that the active investors who account for the remaining 70% can't form an independent opinion and blindly follow benchmark indices, which isn't flattering either.
In ESG investing, a similarly truthy critique holds that portfolios managed with ESG overlays have to underperform their conventional peers. Why? Because such overlays are "optimization with additional constraints." So ESG investing means excluding oil and gas or similarly ESG-challenged companies from the portfolio. Thus, modern portfolio theory dictates that the efficient frontier cannot lead to the same return as one that includes these stocks.
There are two problems with this contention. First, it assumes that ESG investing is the same as excluding certain companies or sectors from a portfolio. This is how many people still approach ESG investing and it is, quite frankly, the worst way to do it. Not only do exclusionary screens not work, they are counterproductive.
Luckily, serious ESG investors moved on from exclusions a long time ago. The next iteration of ESG was the best-in-class approach. ESG portfolios invested in all sectors but only in the companies with the lowest ESG risk in each sector.
Every ESG index follows this course. To be sure, best-in-class investing has its own problems, so I'm not endorsing it. But this single modification refutes the notion that ESG investing cannot possibly have the same risk-return trade-off as conventional investing. The performance of the MSCI World Index and the MSCI World ESG Index demonstrates this.
MSCI AC World vs. MSCI AC World ESG Leaders
Source: MSCI
The two indices are virtually identical. Technically, the ESG index has an annualized return of 5.35% since its 2007 inception compared to 5.32% for the conventional index. The same exercise with regional and country indices yields the same results. The performance of ESG indices has more or less mirrored that of conventional indices over the last decade or more.
That, by the way, shouldn't come as a surprise. The best-in-class approach mimics conventional strategies as closely as possible. Which is exactly what most ESG indices were set up to do.
Most active fund managers do not outperform conventional market indices and since ESG indices have virtually the same performance as conventional indices, this also means that the majority of active fund managers do not outperform ESG indices either.
Which brings me to the second flawed critique of ESG investing. That ESG investing has to underperform its conventional counterpart because it is optimization with additional restrictions is a theoretical argument: It may be true in an ideal world but it isn't true at all in practice. Modern portfolio theory assumes that we can forecast future returns, volatilities, and correlations between assets with extreme precision. But in reality, every forecast has estimation errors. The recent presidential election in the United States demonstrates this. Those who were surprised by the closeness of the outcome either don't understand estimation errors or haven't paid attention.
The same is true for portfolio optimization. I have written about estimation uncertainty and how it ruins our investment process in the real world here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. I should think that the lesson would have sunk in by now, but it obviously has not.
In the end, the uncertainties around our forecasts are so much bigger than any constraints that modern ESG investing may put on our portfolios. To contend that fully integrated ESG investing is constrained optimization is itself an argument constrained by truthiness. And that's the word.
Image credit: ©Getty Images / Getty Images North America
Tags: ESG, ESG issues, Investment Management Strategies, Investment Products and Asset Classes, Performance Measurement & Evaluation
2 thoughts on "The Truthiness of ESG Criticism"
Abdesalem dahmouni says:
I am pleased to give my opinion ,on such ESG participation ESG will help the international new plants as new circular economy projects. The new clean energies process will come from the new intrapreneurs from where multiples ways and variable applications types depending on at first .As first point is the standard of all similar project with variables volumes of the feed stock on site for power production ,then the by product are a second product considered as vital example circular economy in rural zone .Producing power and bio char as very important for the food preparation and home heating use with a safe ustensile for heating particular. After the first point which is the industry 4.zero then the efficiency witch is an integral technology in the process ,here modular process may be in help for launching the new industries. Third we usually will work with the basic feedstock biomass with the clean combustion of the renewable natural gas using new technology with Neutral CO2 emissions .Using fossil feed stock as pet coke the goal is to avoid a direct combustion of the solid fossil and combust its renewable natural gas so the pollution or Fossil CO2 is divided by 2 for the same energy while the by product will be also a useful direct combustion fuel at cement kiln or steel and aluminum industries applications so this is the first efficiency .The others technological efficiencies is are multiples new application design for better thermodynamic application. Theses are the basic rules for reducing the investment risk.
Jonas Jorgensen says:
Thanks for the words! Made me wonder a little. Hasn't there been a decent flow into ESG stocks recently (https://www.refinitiv.com/perspectives/market-insights/covid-19-flows-into-esg-funds-continue-during-1q20/) and yet the performance of the MSCI AC World vs. MSCI AC World ESG Leaders is almost identical? Is there a good explanation for this?