Does anyone have any advice or opinions they can share about ethically-conscious ASX ETFs?

There’s a few lists around, for example:

But it’s difficult to have confidence in any of these ETFs without looking into them extensively, so I was hoping I might be able to leverage the community knowledge if people here have already looked into them.

I figure many funds may be less ethical than they put on. For example, ASX:VETH excludes fossil fuels, but has a large exposure to the Big Four banks, who are big investors in fossil fuels.

Also, return figures might be misleading if a fund’s ethical criteria bias its holdings towards certain industries, meaning the returns could be boosted by one-off events in those industries. For example, Motley Fool notes that ASX:ETHI is biased towards US tech stocks, including Apple and NVIDIA, and so its performance last year was boosted by the AI landrush.

Fossil fuels and weapons are my highest priorities for exclusion, if that’s useful context.

  • zero_gravitasOPEnglish
    2·
    23 hours ago

    Thanks very much for the comprehensive response - I appreciate it a lot!

    to sleep better at night knowing that you are less directly involved with the business practices which you don’t like

    Yeah, this is approximately my motivation. Your points about actual practical impacts are interesting and helpful, though.

    Lots to consider, thanks again!

    • MHLoppy@fedia.io
      3·
      8 hours ago

      No worries, hopefully it was helpful enough to justify possibly accidentally scaring off anybody else from answering! 😅