You want to invest in stocks, but you're worried about some of the bad, pollutey stuff that companies sometimes do. Dumping toxic waste into rivers. Locking employees into factories. Naming the CEO's cousin Irvin as head of corporate governance.
You don't want to research individual companies. You just want to buy an index that only includes companies that have good reputations on things like the environment, or labor practices, or corporate governance.
Enter the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices. The "sustainability" part refers to the companies' reputations for a long-term outlook. It includes things like environmental sustainability, corporate governance, and labor relations.
There are actually a bunch of Dow Sustainability Indices, each covering a different geographic region. The Dow Jones Sustainability United States Index covers U.S. stocks. As of 2018, it included companies like GM, Bank of America, and Nike.
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Finance: What is the S&P 500?45 Views
finance a la shmoop. what is the S&P 500? well the S&P 500 is just an index- that
is the standard and poors company assembled 500 stocks put them on a
spreadsheet- this was a spreadsheet in 1957 -and they tracked them. [spreadsheet pictured]
well the index had something like 37 shares of Procter & Gamble, the 23 shares
of Ford, 18 shares of IBM and so on. in the 1950s the S&P 500 totaled something
like 40 maybe 50 bucks on a good day. at the end of each day the elves who worked
inside of the S&P Factory, they would add up the shares basically ignore any
dividends and send to the press a total which was published to more or less
everyone who cared about investing. well not nearly even a century later the 40 [man reads newspaper]
to $50 reign to the SNP is today knock on the door of 2,500 .so without even
having dividends reinvested you'd have made 50 times your money with dividends
reinvested to buy more shares instead of keeping the cash to buy you know
groceries or electric massage slippers. you'd have made over 70 times your [grocery display case and slippers pictured]
original investment. welcome to America.
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