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 https://deceptionandtruthanalysis.com/ (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.

Free Money with Sloane and Ashby

Deception and Truth Analysis

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 talk about the regulatory crackdown into greenwashing, the opportunities to converge ESG reporting frameworks, and more.

The Outlook for ESG Outcome Data

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: https://lettinggobook.org/ (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, the director of communications at Village Capital.

Remastered: How Letting Go Unleashes Impact

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.

Onlyfans Throws Itself Overboard

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 firm. Also, here are links to https://shespends.org/ (She Spends) and the https://confirmsubscription.com/h/d/EEDB9AF2C4B7E5AA (Essential Allocator).

Inside The Institutional Narrative (Feat. Alicia McElhaney)

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 to power the next proxy battle.

Effective Shareholder Activism

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 decided to start an ETF instead of a data company. After discussing the peculiar difficulties Adasina encountered when starting a new investment firm, Rachel mentioned some allocator-oriented suggestions to make their due diligence process less onerous for startup managers, which are available here: https://www.duediligencecommitment.com/

Social Justice Investing

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, and talks about how pensions can profit from sustainable fixed income strategies. 

Fixed Income in the Anthropocene (Feat. Ulf Erlandsson)

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.

The Yale Model Episode

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. He's led some of the most innovative infrastructure transactions we're aware of, and talks here about everything from asset recycling to "digital twinning" and how his team is exploring the use of drones.

The Infrastructure Episode

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.

Birthing a Blockchain Business inside a Giant Dutch Pension

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. 

Gamification is Good, Actually

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about a place on the internet called https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/ (WallStreetBets). Depending on who you ask it’s the epicenter of a revolution, the biggest threat to financial stability since COVID, or a fun place to post memes. We were tired of baseless hot takes about this, so we decided to call my friend https://twitter.com/mslizzhang (Liz Zhang) 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. She’s a software engineer by day and a part of my “bubble,” which means we were able to deliver something unprecedented on this episode of Free Money: an in-person interview. Liz experienced the growth of interest in GameStop stock firsthand, and she tells the story of how one disciplined poster managed to gather unheard of interest in a stock that most investors had left for dead. And now, “his position is worth tens of millions, and he’s treated in some ways literally like a god.” She also shared some of the biggest legends of WallStreetBets with us, like the time a user exploited a glitch in their Robinhood account to gain something close to unlimited leverage. And of course, we talked about what comes next for this group of redditors. She shared that recently “they have become an almost socialist ‘let’s take down the hedge funds’ group. But that’s more recent and honestly I don’t see it lasting.” This is one of the few opportunities to hear someone talk about the ongoing short squeeze from a place of experience. Don’t miss out.

The Wall Street Bets Episode

Sloane Ortel and Ashby Monk explore what's holding the world back from investing in progress, answer the questions on the minds of people in the know, and deliver the Brooklyn-Bay Area consensus about institutional investing that you desperately crave. freemoney.substack.com

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Free Money with Sloane and Ashby

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