What the experts say
Fewer promotions for remote staff
Fully remote workers are falling behind on the career track, said Te-Ping Chen in The Wall Street Journal. Recent analysis from employment-data provider Live Data Technologies found that 5.6 percent of employees either “working full time in an office or on a hybrid basis received promotions at their organization in 2023.” But workers who were at home five days a week were promoted only 3.9 percent of the time. Nick Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, said the numbers revealed a “proximity bias” that verges on “discrimination.” Many bosses don’t hide their preference. “Nearly 90 percent of chief executives said that when it comes to favorable assignments, raises, or promotions, they are more likely to reward employees who make an effort to come to the office.”
ESG funds retrench after criticism
ESG investing has lost its momentum, said Will Schmitt in the Financial Times. “Just six funds citing environment, social, and governance factors launched in the second half of 2023, compared with 55 in the first half, and an annual average of almost 100 between 2020 and 2022, according to data from Morningstar Direct.” Sustainable funds that track the broad market slipped in performance compared with their conventional counterparts in 2022 and 2023, after experiencing strong returns in 2019, 2020, and 2021. “However, performance has not been the only factor deterring investments in ESG funds,” which have faced criticism particularly from conservatives for their social and environmental focus. In recent months, numerous funds have removed ESG labels from their names.
Exciting returns from boring stocks
A finance blogger’s “boring portfolio” of stocks has been consistently outperforming the market, said Phil Rosen in Business Insider. At the start of every year since 2006, Eddy Elfenbein has published a 25-name “buy list” of stocks he’d “be comfortable holding for an average of five years.” A few stocks “get swapped if necessary at the start of the year, but otherwise, it sees no trading or shuffling.” That list has produced a compound gain of 573 percent since 2006, better than the S&P 500’s 447 percent return. In 2016, Elfenbein launched an exchange-traded fund, the AdvisorShares Focused Equity ETF (CWS), so the public could invest along with him. This year’s list includes Hershey, Intuit, Moody’s, and Aflac.