1 minute read
Wedbush Securities
SEAN TRAGER
SVP, ADVANCED CLEARING AND PRIME SERVICES, WEDBUSH SECURITIES
The Covid-19 pandemic reshaped the investment landscape. The hardships we faced as human beings (as well as investment managers) forced us to consider our long-term viability as a species. Health, safety and sustainability are now considered like never before when deploying capital. We found that investment dollars, in many cases, facilitated growth and change on a global scale, and more specifically that we could change the world in a way that awareness alone could not. Family offices, endowments and institutional investors alike, care about where their money is being spent and how it impacts our respective futures.
The volatility faced over the last two years is like nothing Wedbush has ever seen before. That said, whereas we once largely considered alpha and potential draw downs, we now consider the larger impact on our world. The appetite for enacting change socially, environmentally and otherwise is now a paramount component to marketability.
It is unlikely that anyone can predict the future of ESG investment, but we imagine that we will see hedge funds facilitating much of the change that banks do not. It might be an obscure biotech company farming shrimp that saves our oceans by helping minimise the need for commercial fishing, for example. Agribusiness alone could steer us away from the rocks in combating global warming and pollution.
A unified front between politicians, practitioners and regulators will allow for growth in the ESG space. That growth will impact us as people in ways Wall Street never has. Using our capital to alter the course of history through human rights initiatives, farming, carbon emissions, and biotech will make Wall Street more effective than most non-profit organisations.
CHAPTER FIVE
ALLOCATOR SENTIMENT
