From Boston.com: Socially responsible investments are showing sustained growth, even as investors pull money out of traditional funds. This is an encouraging trend!
In the 1990s barely 100 SRI mutual funds existed. That’s doubled to around 200 funds now, DeSimone said. Still, that’s a small fraction of the more than 4,600 stock mutual funds on the market.
Notably, SRI investors remained committed to the principles they supported through even the worst market turbulence.
Inflows for socially responsible funds remained positive throughout 2008 when investors were pulling out of stock funds in massive numbers. All told, SRI funds managed to capture $700 million, while nearly $96 billion was pulled from stock mutual funds. That’s a relatively small figure, but significant in that it ran counter to the stock selling trend, said Kathryn Young, a fund analyst with Morningstar Inc.
The trend continued during the market rebound. Last year SRI funds took in $4 billion while investors pulled nearly $25 billion from stock mutual funds.
