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08.08.13
Five months without an update? Kind of inexcusable isn't it? It's my fault for making a manually coded website on a not-that-accessible server.
Also I was busy. And tonight I'm recently back from an eye exam wherein they dialated my pupils and working on close detail (like the tiny text I'm writing) requires
rather a lot of eye strain. I have the screen greatly enlarged and am typing at full arm's length. So. I'm behind. Let's start with some old stuff.
I think I wrote this in February and forgot to post it.
Once again, the trek to the bank pre-RRSP deadline. Once again, the incredulity of the financial manager on what the previous financial manager did last year. Should I just stick with one? Probably. At least this year we avoided the musical office power play of last time. I met with a seemingly normal Asian guy who expressed a flicker of interest when we did the obligatory small talk about my job. And I did ask about ethical investing, at which point he asked me "Why?", then added, "besides the obvious."
This got us sidetracked for a while, and diverted into websites no longer belonging to the bank. Then we got sidetracked off the sidetrack and started talking about, wait for it, "Islamic Mutual Funds", which I had never heard of. Apparently they were fairly new to him too, because when I asked "What do they invest in?" he didn't really have an answer.
Other than conforming to Shariah law, concrete examples were mostly lacking. Given, it is one standard of ethics, but as my issues are mostly environmental and social, you can't really do the one-ethics-fits-all solution. We avoided the "what are ethics?" stoner question of a third sidetrack when I said I probably wouldn't be investing in Islamic Mutual Funds because "that's just switching one black box for another." By which I meant one unknown set of investments for another, and not, as I realized when I was saying it, a pun about the Kaaba. (I don't know how many puns there are about the Kaaba, I mean the potential is high, but I doubt they make the stand-up circuit.) He didn't pick up on it, or if he did, it didn't show, and I didn't point it out.
Returning to the original sidetrack, it seems no "ethical" fund (that this particular bank managed) had exceeded the rate of inflation, factoring in management fees. This was disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. Having ethics and making money do indeed seem to be incompatible.
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