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One of the pitches for socially conscious stock funds has been that their performance won’t differ that much from the stock market’s. In theory, that lets you invest according to your values while approximating the market’s return.

This year’s stock market swoon has shown that to be painfully true — and then some. Socially responsible stock funds haven’t just fallen in step with the S&P 500. They’ve sunk a bit more.

The stock funds tracked by Morningstar dropped about 26.4 percent this year through Sept. 30, while the S&P 500 was down about 23.9 percent.

The offerings are better known as environmental, social and governance, or E.S.G., funds. That name stems from the fact that their managers, in making investment decisions, weigh environmental, social and corporate governance factors alongside financial ones.

Whatever you call them, something these stock offerings share with many large-capitalization stock funds and exchange-traded funds is that they often own a lot of technology companies.

Tech stocks account for about one-quarter of the assets of the average large-cap E.S.G. fund, compared with only one-fifth of the assets of the average traditional large-cap fund, according to Morningstar. And technology has been one of the sorriest stock-market sectors this year, down 31.4 percent through the end of the third quarter.

Many of the funds favor what investment professionals call growth stocks, which include technology names. This year’s market has battered growth stocks, while their antitheses, value stocks, have fared better.

“There are probably a lot of E.S.G. investors who didn’t know they were overweight growth,” said Jennifer Ellison, a financial adviser with Cerity Partners who is based in San Francisco. “But they’re waking up now and asking, ‘Why is my E.S.G. fund underperforming?’ We’re having a lot of those discussions with clients.”

What’s the difference between growth and value stocks, and why does it matter to E.S.G investing?

You could say growth stocks are favored by seers — people who years ago imagined that Google’s ability to vacuum up data from online searches could yield more than just a better search engine. (Google’s parent company is now called Alphabet.) Value stocks are favored by bargain hunters — people who today may envision General Electric not as an aging industrial conglomerate but as a sturdy collection of assets trading at a discount.

Sometimes — as was the case for much of the last decade — the stock market favors growth stocks. Other times — like this year — it favors value stocks. The S&P 500 Growth Index fell 30.4 percent through Sept. 30, while the S&P 500 Value Index dropped 16.6 percent.

In theory, investors with diversified portfolios should own both growth- and value-oriented funds — or a single fund with roughly balanced allocations of growth and value stocks.

An example of an actively managed socially conscious, or sustainable, fund with such a portfolio is the Vanguard Global E.S.G. Select Stock Fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.56 percent and has returned an annual average of 7.7 percent since its 2019 inception, though it is down 23 percent for the year through the third quarter. It owns a mix of U.S. and foreign stocks, and tech stocks account for only about 15 percent of its holdings.

The recent woes of many socially responsible stock funds and E.T.F.s raise the question why they have tilted toward growth stocks.

Part of the reason is that early E.S.G. clients tended to be driven mainly by their values, said Michelle Dunstan, chief responsibility officer for AllianceBernstein.

Funds catered to those clients by excluding environmentally damaging businesses, like nuclear power producers, and holding the best-of-the-best E.S.G. performers, she said. That led them toward growth ones like technology and consumer discretionary stocks.

Ms. Dunstan said sustainable strategies are now seeking out companies trying to improve their E.S.G. performance. She said AllianceBernstein, in its research, hasn’t been able to connect good E.S.G. ratings with stocks outperforming their peers.

“But we have made a link with improvement in E.S.G. ratings and outperformance. These companies aren’t just improving their E.S.G. ratings — they’re trying to become better companies overall.”

E.S.G. ratings from data providers like MSCI and Morningstar Sustainalytics can also influence stocks’ inclusion in sustainable funds, said Jon Hale, head of sustainability research for Morningstar. These ratings address risks like companies’ greenhouse gas emissions or workplace safety violations.

“Generally speaking, if you took the entire universe of stocks and evaluated them based on E.S.G. metrics, growth stocks would score higher than value stocks,” he said.

Many of the funds also bar companies that own fossil fuel reserves or depend heavily on fossil fuels in their operations. That knocks out not only much of the energy companies but also some manufacturers and utilities, other common value plays. Energy has been by far the best-performing sector this year, returning nearly 35 percent through Sept. 30.

“If you exclude hydrocarbons or heavy industry, you’re going to tend to skew more growthy,” said Aaron S. Dunn, co-manager of the Calvert Focused Value Fund. Mr. Dunn’s fund, an E.S.G. offering, owns two energy companies — NextEra and Constellation Energy — among its 30 holdings. The fund started earlier this year.

Only a few other sustainable value funds and E.T.F.s exist.

The biggest actively managed offering in the niche is the Parnassus Endeavor Fund, headed by Billy Hwan. Over the five years that ended Sept. 30, the fund, with a net expense ratio of 0.88 percent, returned an annual average of 9 percent; it lost 24.2 percent this year through Sept. 30.

Its largest holding is Merck, a pharmaceutical company that Mr. Hwan said he bought when its future looked uncertain. “They had an overreliance on one drug” — a cancer treatment called Keytruda — “but were investing hugely in R.&D.,” he said. “New management came in and diversified their revenues. A year and a half later, it’s one of our better performers.”

Among the indexed options for sustainable value investing are the Nuveen E.S.G. Large-Cap Value E.T.F. and the Calvert U.S. Large-Cap Value Responsible Index Fund.

Jordan Farris, head of E.T.F. product for Nuveen, said his company’s E.T.F. aims to give investors risk and return similar to a typical value fund but with sustainability considerations factored in. The E.T.F.’s holdings — it has about 100 — have “higher E.S.G. scores and low carbon-emissions intensity,” he said.

“Investors often assume E.S.G. funds are low carbon, but that’s not necessarily the case,” he said. “We remove companies that own coal, oil or natural gas that’s still in the ground. This makes our product align with investors’ perceptions of what E.S.G. means.”

The fund, with an expense ratio of 0.25 percent, has returned an annual average of 5 percent over the last five years.

Why does a nonprofessional need to care about subtleties like growth versus value stocks and how much a fund holds of each?

Some socially conscious funds, like Vanguard’s E.S.G. offering, save you from that worry. These are often referred to as core or blend funds.

The Northern U.S. Quality E.S.G. Fund is similar in its investments. Its managers pair E.S.G. evaluations with assessments of financial quality and end up with a blended portfolio intended to be less risky than the typical sustainable stock fund.

“There are many stocks that rank highly from an E.S.G. perspective that don’t necessarily rank highly from a financial perspective,” said Michael Hunstad, chief investment officer for global equities at Northern Trust.

“You really need to control the unintended risk of E.S.G. investing,” he said. “If you’re naïve, you’ll be underexposed to energy and utilities and underweight the U.S., and that’s a lot of extraneous risk.”

The Northern Trust fund’s sector allocations look much like those of its non-E.S.G. benchmark, the Russell 1000. Since the fund’s inception in October 2017, it has outperformed the benchmark, returning an annual average of 9.5 percent versus the index’s 8.9 percent. It lost 24.6 percent this year through Sept. 30. The fund has a net expense ratio of 0.49 percent.

The reason to aim for a balance of growth and value stocks, whether in one fund or across your portfolio, isn’t just to achieve a finance professor’s vision of an ideal asset allocation.

A portfolio with more balanced risks is one that an investor is more likely to stick with in turbulent times, like the current market, said Wendy Cromwell, head of sustainable investment for Wellington Management.

The trouble with owning sustainable funds — or any funds — that load up on growth stocks is you’ll be tempted to bail out when growth stocks sink, she said. (The same would be true if you owned value-oriented funds when value sagged.) Research shows that retail investors trade too often and buy and sell at the wrong time.

“It can be really hard for retail investors to hold the line when the opposite style is outperforming,” she said. “But the trick is to stick with your long-term plan. You want to invest in funds that help you overcome your own bad tendencies.” Join du88 today and discover a world of exclusive promotions, bonuses, and VIP rewards designed to enhance your betting journey.

Forecasting the direction of the volatile energy markets has never been easy. But experts say the complexity of market forces brewing now, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, makes it especially difficult to predict the direction of both energy prices and the industry.

“I’ve never seen such a spicy bouillabaisse of ingredients that could wreak havoc on energy prices,” said Tom Kloza, the global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service. “You have to look and say that the world changed on Feb. 24,” the day of the Russian invasion.

A variety of forces could sustain high energy prices, including the recent production cuts by the producer group OPEC Plus, the winding down of an American-led program to release oil from the strategic reserves of the United States and other countries, subsidies by several European nations to help citizens pay higher energy costs and slow industry investment in drilling operations. On the other hand, prices could fall on fears of a global recession, the potential for energy rationing in Europe this winter and an effort by the Group of 7 industrialized nations to impose a price cap on Russian oil.

Brent crude, the closely watched benchmark for global oil prices, fell almost 25 percent during the third quarter, finishing September trading around $85 a barrel, although it has since moved higher as OPEC Plus announced significant cuts. The U.S. government forecasts that oil will trade at an average price of $95 a barrel in 2023.

Funds that invest in American energy companies, which typically mimic price movements in the oil markets, rose exponentially along with oil prices in the first quarter of this year. By contrast, those funds fell by an average of less than 1 percent in the three months that ended in September. Energy is the only stock sector fund category that posted gains, on average, in the first nine months of this year, according to Morningstar Direct.

Experts say the Group of 7 agreement on Sept. 2 to cap the price of Russian oil is generating much of the uncertainty about oil prices. The plan aims to limit Russia’s export revenues while keeping its oil flowing through global markets. Skeptics, though, say ‌a price cap may be difficult to enforce. Oil embargoes are notoriously leaky‌‌, and shippers can use legal measures ‌like ship-to-ship transfers at sea to try to obscure the origins of a cargo.

Goldman Sachs issued a research report the same day as the price cap agreement was announced, calling it “bearish in theory, bullish in practice” for oil prices and predicting that Russia, which pumps about 10 percent of the 100 million barrels of oil produced globally each day, might retaliate by cutting its exports to drive up global energy costs. That, the report said, “would turn this into an additional bullish shock for the oil market.”

That day, the Russian-owned energy giant Gazprom announced that it would postpone restarting natural gas flows from Russia to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Later in September, gas leaks were discovered in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines under the Baltic Sea. The European Union and several European governments blamed sabotage for the damage.

But Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management, who has been studying the impact of Russia’s war on the energy industry through the Chief Executive Leadership Institute that he founded at the school, recently wrote an opinion piece expressing his confidence in the Group of 7 plan. In an interview, he pointed to the small number of major shippers and insurers, mostly based in Europe, saying that should make enforcement easy because “you can count on both hands the number of parties you would need to enforce it with.”

He also cast doubt on the idea that Russia would switch off its oil spigots as readily as it had stopped sending natural gas to Europe. Russia has more options to sell its oil, and shutting down wells could create future problems for the Russian industry, Professor Sonnenfeld said, so President Vladimir V. Putin “would be poisoning the Russian economy for years.”

Philip K. Verleger, an energy economist who began his career as a Washington policy adviser 50 years ago, said that the production cuts announced by OPEC Plus are likely to have less of an impact now because the circumstances are quite different. The United States was more dependent on foreign oil in the 1970s, he said, so OPEC’s aggressive moves led to gas rationing and lines at filling stations. But the United States is a bigger producer today, and some drivers are choosing vehicles that use little to no gas.

“Electric vehicles are beginning to penetrate the market so rapidly that if OPEC pushes too hard now, they could really accelerate the move off oil,” Mr. Verleger said.

In past economic cycles, higher energy prices have reduced demand, ultimately putting a lid on prices. European governments are providing a test case by spending billions of dollars on price controls and direct stimulus payments to offset higher energy costs while encouraging their citizens to voluntarily turn down the thermostats. President Emmanuel Macron of France has called such voluntary conservation efforts “energy sobriety.”

But Europe is also investing heavily in new infrastructure to support imports of liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., which is supercooled so it can be shipped on tankers. They’ve been signing a flurry of deals to construct the facilities required to reconvert L.N.G. to vaporous gas in Germany, France, Belgium and elsewhere. American exporters may be among the biggest beneficiaries of this trend. The United States began exporting L.N.G. six years ago and became the world’s largest exporter in the first half of this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Paul M. DeSisto, executive vice president of the wealth management firm M&R Capital Management, says that whatever direction energy prices take, he sees the big energy companies in the S&P 500 index returning to something closer to their 20-year average of 8.3 percent of the market value of the index. At the end of September, energy stocks represented 4.5 percent of the S&P 500. “Given how important energy is to the world economy, I think it will return to something closer to the longer view,” he said.

His firm uses two energy-focused exchange-traded funds in client portfolios: the $35 billion Energy Select Sector SPDR, managed by State Street Global Advisors, and the $7 billion Vanguard Energy fund. The two funds have a slight difference in composition as they track different market indexes. The State Street fund owns the 21 energy stocks in the S&P 500 index, while the Vanguard fund includes a mix of more than 100 large, midsize and small U.S. energy companies. But the returns after the 0.1 percent management fee charged by both funds tend to be similar because Exxon Mobil and Chevron are the two biggest holdings in each fund, representing more than a third of the total assets. The State Street fund returned 33.76 percent in the first three quarters of the year, while the Vanguard fund returned 34.71 percent.

Despite the substantial geopolitical risks, commodity prices may ultimately be most influenced by the rate at which companies choose to invest profits in their own operations. So far, companies have been focused on returning profits to shareholders through dividends.

The Biden administration is keen to see more investment in the energy industry. “Ultimately our goal here in the United States and around the world has got to be to increase the supply of energy,” Wally Adeyemo, U.S. deputy secretary of the Treasury, said at a recent energy conference at Columbia University. He pointed out that the president has taken steps in this direction by releasing petroleum from the country’s strategic reserves, but also by calling on the private sector to increase production. “We want to make sure that supply chains are stronger in the United States, but also among our friends and allies.” At vicclub, we offer a wide range of betting options, competitive odds, and secure transactions for a seamless gaming experience.

But the industry may still be reluctant to risk lowering prices too quickly. Mr. Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service said he thought the industry had learned its lesson from past boom and bust cycles and wouldn’t dramatically ramp up drilling. “They’ve gotten the message,” he said. “The companies are not going to kill the golden goose.”

Last fall, Jina Kim and two of her friends splurged on a two-night stay at the Ananti at Busan Cove, a luxury resort in Busan, South Korea.

The resort, where rooms start at $369 a night, features infinity pools, spas, eight restaurants, a private coastal walk and beach area, and a 4,600-meter “Water House” — an indoor pool and sauna fed by natural hot-spring water.

“We just spent the whole day in the resort hotel, swimming, eating and drinking,” said Ms. Kim, a 32-year-old former teacher who is now a stay-at-home mother.

Ms. Kim and her friends weren’t worried about how they would pay for the trip because they had spent over a decade saving in a “gyemoim,” a Korean term for people who form financial planning groups to save money for future expenses.

Forming gyemoim groups can help friends or families split travel costs equally so everyone can participate, regardless of his or her personal budget.

“Honestly, if we didn’t make the gyemoim, then it would have been too difficult for us to arrange that kind of trip,” Ms. Kim said. “It would have cost too much, and we didn’t want other members to feel pressured by that.”

Maintaining Relationships Through Saving

Collective financial planning has had a long history in many parts of the world.

“It’s actually not unique to South Korea,” said Euncheol Shin, an associate professor of economics at KAIST College of Business in Seoul. “This practice first developed because there was no financial market out there, and if you wanted to borrow some money, you had to do some self-financing.”

Dr. Shin gave an example of a village 200 years ago that needed to buy seeds to grow rice. The financial structures to take out loans didn’t yet exist in many places, so villages pooled their money, bought supplies and split what they reaped.

Over time, this practice evolved into a way for people to keep friendships strong and communities united.

Each member of a gyemoim contributes what are essentially “club dues” — often between $10 and $50 each month, with the amount decided by the group. As the balance increases, the members discuss how to spend it together.

Ms. Kim first formed a gyemoim with two friends after they met at a social club in 2014. The three were attending different colleges and believed the gyemoim would allow them to regularly meet up.

Initially, they each agreed to contribute 15,000 won, or about $13, every month. Over the next decade, they saved more than 3,000,000 won, or about $2,200, before deciding to spend the money on a trip to the Ananti, the resort. By then, the three friends had become busy with their own careers and families, but they remained close, in part, because of the gyemoim.

“It allowed us to keep in touch and have a good time together without worrying about the cost,” Ms. Kim said.

Young-hoon Lee, 35, said his mother headed the gyemoim for her apartment building.

Mr. Lee, a teaching assistant at an English language academy, is part of a gyemoim that consists of two women and four men, all of whom contribute 50,000 Korean won, or about $36, each month.

“We became close friends during high school, and we’ve remained friends into adulthood,” he said. “Initially, we got together just to have fun, but as everyone started working, we began thinking more about the future. So, while maintaining our friendship is important, we also decided to support each other through significant life events, such as weddings or funerals.”

Mr. Lee’s gyemoim typically uses its shared funds to reconnect a handful of times a year, usually to enjoy a meal of Korean barbecue or fried chicken and beer.

Ms. Kim also traveled with a different gyemoim to Vietnam at the end of April. The trip cost much less than her stay at the Ananti, though she said her group of three women still stayed in a nice hotel and had a great time together.

Why Gyemoims Work in South Korea

Gyemoim groups can work in South Korea because of the nature of the country’s social interactions and culture of trust.

For example, in South Korea you could walk into a coffee shop in Seoul and leave your bag, laptop and wallet full of credit cards and cash at your seat unattended and go to the bathroom without needing to worry if it would all be there when you got back. (Though, to be sure, scams and fraud occur just like anywhere else.)

“Let’s say that you and I are friends,” Dr. Shin said. “We have grown up in a small town for a very long time. We know everything about each other. If I borrow some money and I don’t pay it back, then you’re going to say, ‘Hey, everyone, Euncheol borrowed some money from me, and he never paid me back.’” Because of the collective nature of social groups, Dr. Shin explained, he would be ostracized by people in his community.

Forming a group to save is so common in South Korea that one bank is adapting to the custom. KakaoBank, an arm of the country’s most popular communication app, KakaoTalk, now offers a gyemoim group account product where friends can share a bank account managed by one designated account holder.

Mr. Lee and Ms. Kim started their gyemoim groups before KakaoBank existed, so they entrusted their funds to one member of their saving circles. Some groups, like Mr. Lee’s, still prefer this “old-fashioned” method of collecting money. Mr. Lee said one of his groups had decided who would be entrusted with the money by majority vote.

Both of Ms. Kim’s gyemoim groups now use the KakaoBank option because it allows all members to see how their pooled money is moved in their account, which earns up to 2 percent interest. The account manager is the sole person with control over how the funds are used, but everyone pays in. Users can set reminders to send their monthly dues to the account and communicate through the app’s chat feature.

Gyemoim groups don’t last forever. Circumstances change, friends may have a falling-out, someone may no longer want to participate or a new person may want to join. When that happens, it’s up to the collective to decide how to handle it.

“There are no particular rules to run a group, although in some groups, other people have created their own rules,” Ms. Kim said. “But my groups never really had rules.”

Ms. Kim’s gyemoim that visited Busan used to include another friend, who decided to bow out a few years ago for financial reasons.

“In our case,” she said, “we asked her what she wanted to do with her part of the money. She decided to have her part refunded instead of using it. ”

While there was a peaceful parting of ways in Ms. Kim’s gyemoim, disagreements aren’t unheard-of, either. Ms. Kim said she had a friend who was part of a gyemoim that disbanded when its members couldn’t agree on how to plan a trip. For a group to be successful, she added, members need to share similar interests and values.

Could Gyemoim Groups Work in the U.S.?

No American bank offers a product quite like what South Korea’s KakaoBank offers for gyemoim groups. To ensure full transparency for all members of your group, the closest option is to open a joint checking or savings account so those involved can have equal access.

This could be difficult depending on the size of your group and your proximity to one another. Banks that don’t have traditional brick-and-mortar locations are most likely going to have the best options. For example, a representative from Ally Bank, which operates online, said the bank allowed up to four co-owners on a spending account.

If you open an account with a bank that includes fees, factor the cost into everyone’s shared contribution.

Opening a joint account has drawbacks, too, such as what might happen if a friend wants to leave the group. Depending on the bank, removing someone from a joint account can be tough or impossible without closing the account.

In addition, unlike an individual account, a joint account gives every person equal legal ownership of the funds in it whether the person contributed all of the money or not. Despite shared ownership, you can’t force anyone to pay dues into the account, either.

Still, if you wanted to form a gyemoim, you could do it the old-fashioned way by selecting one trusted person to be in charge of pooled funds in an individual savings account.

The cultural traditions that allow gyemoims to work well in Korean society aren’t as present in Western culture, so collective funding can be a bit of a gamble if you don’t know your members well.

When forming a group, Mr. Lee suggested, include at least “one or two trustworthy people.” He also recommended the group stay open to new members, as circumstances can change unexpectedly, and new friends can energize a group that has grown stale.

Mr. Lee also recommended forming groups around a specific purpose, such as getting together regularly to pursue a hobby. Friends who have known one another a long time, such as Ms. Kim and her friends, may easily save money with no concrete purpose in mind. But new friends or acquaintances will thrive if they have mutual interests. Experience the thrill of online betting with 9bet, your trusted platform for exciting sports and casino games.

“As a Korean who values a sense of community, I think the culture of community is good, and I hope more people will pursue a culture where everyone gets along well,” Mr. Lee said.