Free Money with Sloane and Ashby

We're joined in this episode by Paul Smith, CFA, a co-founder of SustainFinance and the former CEO Of CFA Institute. We chat about: His favorite experience leading CFA Institute, which is global beyond simple comprehension. How prepared the industry is to navigate the climate transition Whether ESG Investing is just a new form of colonialism We also discussed his outlook for Hong Kong as a financi...

This is a very special episode of Free Money. Our guest, Jason Voss, is a close collaborator of both of ours and the Founder/CEO of Deception and Truth Analysis, or DATA . And honestly, if you like this show at all, you're gonna love this one. We talk about identifiable blind spots in active management processes, the difference between deceit and lying, and all sorts of other good stuff.

Sustainable investment strategies are traditionally long on glossy marketing materials, but a little light on clear outcomes. Like, what happens as a result of making the investment? Our guest in this episode is Sam Duncan, CEO of NetPurpose, an impact measurement platform based in London that helps investors source, share, and stay abreast of the latest data associated with their strategies. We t...

What if it turned out that the best way to actually “do” philanthropy and impact investing was by letting go of the outcome? Our guests on this episode explored exactly that question in a recent book: Letting Go . How philanthropists and impact investors can do more good by giving up control. They are Meg Massey, a journalist covering social impact and social justice in finance, and Ben Wrobel, th...

In this episode, Sloane and Ashby talk about sex work. In particular, they talk about why the finance industry is so skeeved out about it and what that means for platforms like Onlyfans, which now seems likely to pivot away from a dominant position in adult entertainment due to various operational impediments we’ll examine.

Is it worth building a master narrative about institutional investors as a whole? How much progress has been made on racial equity and inclusion since the murder of George Floyd? And does financial advice reinforce destructive social norms? We speak with Institutional Investor's Alicia McElhaney about this and more. We also answer listener questions and talk about Sloane's new investment advisory...

You may have heard that a teeny investment fund managed to force Exxon to take climate change seriously. In this episode, you'll hear from one of the people behind that successful campaign: Jennifer Grancio, the CEO of Engine #1 Asset Management. We talk about how a myopic fossil fuel focus left Exxon with underperforming investments, and about the ETF they recently launched (VOTE).

This week we talk with Rachel Freeman, Adasina's director of investor services, about what it means to build a bridge between social justice organizations and the capital markets. We also touch on issues like: Ending forced arbitration for sexual harassment, which have historically been left out of the ESG equation. Starting a new investment fund as a minority and queer-led firm. Why Adasina decid...

A portfolio manager turned activist, Ulf takes us inside some recent fixed income transactions that imply some banks (and some pensions) are taking their commitments to ESG less than seriously. He then disaggregates the "yield pickup" that buyers of fossil fuel debt have been feasting on, explains how his activist ESG strategy benefits from fixed income trading's nature as a primary market, a...

Yale's CIO David Swensen passed away last month. He left behind an unprecedented track record, a whole new way of doing things, and a much better-funded university. How did he do it, and what can we learn from him? We explore with Capital Allocators podcast host and Yale Investment Office alum Ted Seides.

What does it mean to invest in infrastructure? How do you do it? And what happens when you do? We reached out to Ross Israel of Australia's QIC to learn more.

We chat with Marcel Prins, the COO of ultra-innovative Dutch pension APG, about the blockchain business his team built to maturity and spun out into a standalone company.

Gamification is the financial villain du jour after the whole "WallStreetBets" thing. But it's not all bad! In this episode, we talk to a startup founder who has found success using games to encourage saving. 

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about a place on the internet called WallStreetBets . Liz Zhang joins us for an insider view. She has been active on the forum for three years or so, and has been trading options for fun for about that long.

Pension accounting is a cursed subject. So we called Hugh O’Reilly , who was happy to wade into the discussion with characteristic Canadian politesse. He has loads of experience putting his knowledge into practice as the former CEO of OPTrust (One of Canada’s largest pension funds) as well as a pensions attorney.

It’s the time of year when Wall Street analysts attempt to divine the future. There are a million reasons not to do this, ranging from “it’s a performative waste of time” to “it’s devil worship". We did it anyway.

It’s a great one, featuring a discussion between Sloane, Ashby, Shawn Wooden (Treasurer of CT), Daryn Dodson (Illumen Capital), and Jean Rogers (SASB/LTSE). You’re gonna love it.

Hello and welcome to Free Money, a podcast/newsletter from  Sloane Ortel  and  Ashby Monk  about how long-term investors can free themselves from the shackles of short-term thinking. If you’re new here, thanks for signing up! If someone sent this your way or you found this post through Twitter or some other channel, be sure to sign up below. We publish most Tuesdays. And now, a...

If you build a better market, will the world beat a path to your door? Michelle Greene, President of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, which opened for business earlier this month joins us to discuss.

Looking for work is no fun at all. This is Sloane, and I know because I’m doing it. My consulting business has slowed down dramatically since COVID hit, which means I’ve gone from outright thriving to just surviving. Please do reach out if you’d like to chat about a project. But it’s not just my story. Everyone seems to have lost something during the pandemic. And the notion that tech companies ar...

Imagine governing a state right now. The best positioned public schools, parks departments, and police forces are merely contending with unprecedented times. For most, they are unpredictable as well. And neither condition is helped by a near-universal problem: there is not enough money. America’s national government can deficit spend thanks to the Federal Reserve’s money printer, which famously go...

Where do innovative products and services come from? You might imagine that we have the “invisible hand” of the free market to thank. But in lots of cases, the answer is government-supported research. Consider your smartphone. It uses technologies like GPS, advanced transistors, active-matrix liquid-crystal displays, voice recognition, and graphical web browsers. All of these began their lives as...

Standing by while others suffer is bad. Profiting from their exploitation is worse. And unfortunately, it’s relatively easy to do by accident. Take real estate investment as an example: investors who hold a diversified portfolio of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are likely to hold shares in GEO Group (NYSE: GEO) and CoreCivic (NYSE: CXW). GEO describes itself as a “global leader in evidence...

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity….” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities True classics never seem to age. Think of Pride and Prejudice, The Iliad, and the observation that the general state of things is both bad and good. We also have Macbeth, Jane Ey...

There are durable returns to be found in deep research. So if you're taking the time to integrate a full understanding of environmental, social, and governance issues in your investments, you will tend to end up with innovative and enduring solutions just by doing the work. So in this episode, we decided to spend some time with a significant, oft-neglected issue: food systems. We were fortunate to...