While Wall Street takes its lumps for being too profit-driven, people on the Street are some of the most dedicated and generous do-gooders around. For every Bernie Madoff, there’s a Paul Tudor Jones.
Jones, who runs the Tudor Investment Corp. hedge fund, created the Robin Hood Foundation in 1988, which is now New York’s largest poverty-fighting fund.
Jones has raised more than $2.5 billion for soup kitchens, homeless shelters, schools and job-training programs in the city.
The board of directors of Robin Hood makes sure 100 cents of every dollar goes to those in need. The foundation’s board pays all administrative, fundraising and evaluation costs.
And they evaluate every opportunity before they donate, spending their dollars wisely — feeding the neediest and creating some of the best charter schools in New York.
Last week Jones rolled out a new investment vehicle in partnership with Goldman Sachs, called JUST Capital ETF.
The exchange-traded fund is geared towards investing in “companies that are driving positive change.”
Jones has set up a financial model to determine which companies should be in the ETF, based on its proprietary polling model.
Following Tudor’s lead, the fund polled 72,000 US investors to come up with the proper attributes for inclusion in the ETF.
To be sure, the ETF is designed to make money, since Tudor and Goldman are open and unabashed capitalists.
Whether the new ETF turns out to be societally beneficial is yet to be seen, but it’s the brainchild of one of the most financially and intellectually generous people on the Street.
This ETF may be JUST the thing for those who are looking to combine socially responsible investing and profit.
