Alexander Green is an analyst, author and speaker whose primary mission is to show investors how to achieve and maintain financial independence. For 16 years, he worked as an investment advisor, research analyst and portfolio manager on Wall Street. He has been the Chief Investment Strategist of The Oxford Club since 2001. He has written several New York Times bestsellers, including The Gone Fishin’ Portfolio, Beyond Wealth, The Secret of Shelter Island and An Embarrassment of Riches.
In addition to directing The Oxford Communiqué (as well as The Oxford Communiqué Pro), he oversees three fast-paced VIP Trading Research Services: Oxford Microcap Trader, The Momentum Alert and The Insider Alert. He also writes for Liberty Through Wealth, a free e-letter focused on financial freedom that has more than 200,000 subscribers.
The greatest businesses understand “stakeholder theory,” that to maximize profits you must look out for the interests of everyone who has a stake in the business.
This includes investors, managers, workers, suppliers, customers, and communities.
A prime example of that is John Mackey, the founder and former CEO of Whole Foods.
He took a single small shop in Austin, Texas, and turned it into a chain of more than 500 stores – and what Fortune consistently deems one of “the world’s most admired companies.”
Aside from building a Fortune 500 company from scratch, John has made it his mission to help rebrand the free enterprise system to reveal its heroic nature.
John knows that business is good because it creates value, meeting most of our wants and needs.
It is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange.
It is noble because it elevates our existence.
And it is heroic because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity.
Whole Foods’ Whole Planet Foundation alleviates global poverty for people living in communities in the U.S. and around the world.
And its Whole Kids Foundation supports schools and inspires families to improve children’s nutrition and wellness.
Whole Foods is extraordinary in many respects. And the reason it was able to do so much good was that its focus was making money, not pushing a political agenda. It’s a shining example of the good capitalism can accomplish.
But how do you build a business like this – or find one like it to invest in?
Conscious leaders act with integrity, holding themselves and the organization to the highest standards to earn the trust of those they lead and those they serve.
Businesses that do this have satisfied employees, dependable suppliers, repeat customers, better reputations, fewer regulatory and legal hassles, greater market share, and bigger profits.
Yet in recent years, some have taken stakeholder theory and perverted it, making it something entirely different – often referred to as “woke capitalism.”
It has the thin veneer of doing good and making money in the same way as Whole Foods. But that veneer is shallow, and beneath it is nothing but cynicism and greed.
What’s happening here? Why are some companies embracing it? And what does it mean for investors?
American Democracy’s Kryptonite
In short, woke ideology has become modern orthodoxy. And it has all the fervor and zeal you’d expect from an aggressive – almost religious – ideology.
It has made the United States a place where nearly two-thirds of citizens tell pollsters they are afraid to state their views in public… because anyone who disagrees with the orthodoxy is censored or canceled.
That alone would make this country unrecognizable to the men who founded it. (Perhaps that’s why these woke ideologues want them purged from history.)
There are few better tests of the health of a democracy than the willingness of citizens to speak their minds out loud.
And we no longer have that in American democracy. Because if you’re not woke, you must be one of them… and therefore part of the problem.
You aren’t just someone who disagrees with the woke – you’re a heretic, someone who needs to be destroyed. Simply because you don’t believe in woke ideology, you’re viewed as a threat.
At its heart, woke ideology and the woke capitalism that grew from it are inherently divisive.
One of the reasons the lies of the woke have gained so much traction is that in all the most effective lies, there is a grain of the truth. The lie skews that truth, warping it beyond recognition.
Discrimination does still exist in this country, of course. And we should do what we can to eliminate it. But woke ideology doesn’t do that.
Instead of seeing each employee or job candidate as a unique individual with specific talents, skills and shortcomings, which is how you should actually address discrimination, it sorts them into groups based on race, gender or sexual orientation.
This shouldn’t need to be said but we’ll say it anyway: No one is less qualified for a job because of their race, gender or orientation.
The converse is also true, however. No one is more qualified for a job because of their race, gender or orientation.
So when a company prominently announces a change in its hiring and advancement policies to increase its “diversity scores,” it is not about fair treatment or equal treatment.
It is about preferential treatment, and that is bound to create hard feelings in some quarters.
Yet in today’s politically correct workplaces, expressing dissent often leaves employees open to charges of bigotry, ignorance or closed-mindedness – all sins of the highest order to the woke.
Rather than fostering unity and inclusion, woke ideology creates frustration and resentment. That doesn’t promote team cohesion. It makes the companies that adopt this ideology much less effective.
That’s why corporations should not be in the business of politics. Especially radical politics that the majority of us disagree with.
A national Pew Research Center poll found 74% of Americans, including the majority of Hispanics (68%), Asians (63%), Blacks (59%), Republicans (87%), and Democrats (62%), are hostile to having race be a factor in college admissions.
We’re not suggesting that we’ve achieved full equality in the workplace or in broader American society. We’ve come a long way over the last few decades, but we have further to go.
Yet at a time when the situation has never been better – after all, America was never less racist, sexist or homophobic than it is today – it is often presented as though things have never been worse.
Six out of 10 Americans polled believe women are paid less than men for performing the same work, even though this has been illegal in the U.S. since 1963.
(And the nation has no shortage of tort attorneys.)
Racial disparities in income today are largely due not to racism but to differences in educational attainment, job experience, vocational choice and hours worked.
And studies show that gay men and lesbian women happen to earn more on average than their heterosexual counterparts.
In other words, not every inequity is real. And not every disparity is due to explicit or implicit bias.
And even if woke ideology were right in its assumptions about the world, it offers no real solution, only a victimhood narrative.
It is disempowering to be told you can’t succeed because the cards are stacked against you because you’re a woman… or you’re gay… or you’re a person of color.
It doesn’t make anyone’s life better, but the narrative succeeds wonderfully at making people bitter and angry.
(That makes it a plus for those trying to create activists, generate political donations or drive voters to the polls.)
The actual solution is to see yourself as a unique individual rather than as a member of some historically marginalized group. That puts you in the driver’s seat. It can be difficult to do, but it’s more than worth it…
Because everything changes the day you take responsibility for your life. Unfortunately, many people don’t want to do that, largely because it’s hard.
And that is precisely why woke ideology has found such fertile ground in this country and around the world.
Rather than go through the sometimes-difficult process of taking ownership of their lives, many people choose a comforting lie. They choose to believe that nothing is their fault and society is to blame for all their failings – personal, professional and otherwise.
The lie that they are nothing but victims of circumstance is a rather attractive one to people who refuse to take ownership of their lives and actions.
But successful individuals don’t see themselves as victims. (Or act like “emotional hemophiliacs,” as comedian Bill Maher likes to call them.)
And ever since the lies of woke ideology were born in universities around the country, the ideology has moved from academia and the far-left wing of the Democratic Party to Main Street and Wall Street.
And it is costing investors money and opportunities…
The Good, the Woke and the Ugly
Shareholder capitalism is being replaced by woke capitalism. And it is one of the defining business scams of our time. Fortunately, woke ideology is easy to identify once you know how to spot it. It’s just as ugly when it’s used in business as when it’s used in politics.
Here’s how it works…
Public companies present themselves as something other than “greedy corporations” trying to increase sales and profits.
They put up a do-good smoke screen to improve their public image, distract from harmful practices, and (ahem) increase their sales and profits. But as we’ll see, it simply doesn’t work in the real world.
It’s nothing but virtue signaling, writ large.
And like virtue signaling at the personal level, it is mostly empty talk and meaningless gestures.
What’s more, it often backfires – upsetting employees, customers, suppliers and investors.
For example, Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) opposed a state rule in Florida prohibiting public schools from teaching 5-to-8-year-old students about sexual orientation and gender identity.
That offended tens of millions of parents nationwide, many of them current or potential Disney customers.
It also may result in Walt Disney World losing its 55-year-old status as a “special taxing district” in Florida.
Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) implemented corporate programs teaching employees to be “less white” (i.e., less arrogant and oppressive).
Nike (NYSE: NKE) recalled its Betsy Ross flag-emblazoned shoes when activists claimed that the flag represented slavery.
Facebook and Twitter blocked information about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election – deeming it “Russian disinformation” – as well as the Chinese lab-leak theory about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, deeming it “racist.”
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) famously refused to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation unlock the iPhone of a Muslim man who shot dead three servicemen at Naval Air Station Pensacola.
However, it did help the Communist Party suppress public protests in China last year by suspending the AirDrop feature on its phones there.
Many money managers withhold investor funds from companies that don’t meet their environmental, social and governance – or ESG – standards. (More on that shortly.)
Free market capitalism has no problem with companies spending their own money in pursuit of whatever goals they choose.
But woke capitalism is different…
Isn’t It Ironic?
Woke capitalism isn’t about good business, it’s about managers promoting progressive social values that often have nothing to do with building or promoting the business. It’s a vanity project of personal pride for them.
And it clearly rankles or disappoints many stakeholders. So why do businesses do it?
The first reason, of course, is that some employees, customers and investors share their views.
Another reason is that they want to curry favor with progressive politicians to get self-serving regulatory treatment.
That often means keeping regulations in place – or even increasing them.
Why? Because state and federal regulations are so complicated, onerous and expensive that they keep upstart competition at bay.
Woke policies also aggrandize certain CEOs who would like to exercise quasi-political power but don’t want to endure the time, trouble and expense of getting elected.
There are also grants and subsidies to consider. But that warrants another conversation.
Woke capitalism also deflects attention from problems created by certain businesses.
For example, Coca-Cola put employees through “anti-racist” training.
Yet its products fuel obesity, diabetes, and heart disease in Black communities.
Nike hired NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who knelt during the national anthem to promote “social justice.”
Yet the company’s shoes are made in sweatshops overseas and priced far beyond what most inner-city kids can afford.
Many big businesses have taken on the role of progressive government.
This is not just hurting companies and their share prices. It is polarizing our politics.
Business leaders are supposed to decide things like how much to spend on research and development, where to advertise, and whether to outsource manufacturing.
It is not their role to decide whether a higher minimum wage is more important than full employment.
Or whether reducing the nation’s carbon footprint is more important than reducing the firm’s energy costs.
Corporate CEOs are citizens too, of course. And they have every right to speak up in their personal capacities.
But it’s something else entirely to use the public companies they manage to promote their personal political views.
More to the point, corporations – like individuals – don’t need to virtue signal.
After all, they already play essential roles.
Companies fight tooth and nail to meet all our wants and needs. They provide tens of millions of jobs. They pay billions in annual taxes.
And, not incidentally, they provide shareholders with excellent long-term returns.
Woke capitalism isn’t smart. It isn’t effective. And it isn’t needed.
You Don’t Have to Play the Game Anymore…
Lucky for everyone, there’s an exchange-traded fund, or ETF, that’s taking the fight to the woke capitalist monster.
It’s called the God Bless America ETF (NYSE: YALL), and it’s the best way to invest to counter ESG scores, wokeism and everything else poisoning the well of American finance.
Founded by Adam Curran in 2022 with the express purpose of being “an investment for God-fearing, flag-waving conservatives,” it’s the best of a handful of anti-woke ETFs that have surfaced in recent years.
It holds a diverse group of companies that are either anti-woke or, at the very least, politically neutral.
Some of its larger positions include Boeing, Charles Schwab, Costco and HCA Healthcare, but its portfolio is heavily diversified across several industries, ranging from technology to industrials to healthcare.
And, even better, the God Bless America ETF’s strategy appears to be working well.
It’s up over 40% in the last year, and it shows no signs of stopping. It’s still a relatively small ETF with $90 million in net assets.
The fight against woke capitalism is only just getting started, and so is the God Bless America ETF. All of this ETF’s profit potential is on the horizon, and we have the opportunity to get in on the ground floor.
Action to Take: Buy the God Bless America ETF (NYSE: YALL) at market.
Winning the Fight Against Woke Capitalism
The stakeholder theory that underpins the best businesses today is about improving business practices to make companies more productive, more inclusive and more profitable.
Woke capitalism makes a similar claim but instead makes businesses less productive, less harmonious and more divisive.
This isn’t likely to lead to happier people, bigger profits… or good investments. And it certainly won’t do any good for this wonderful republican experiment of ours.
Our nation’s growth and prosperity have been extraordinary. Our small republican experiment has transformed and dominated global culture and society.
Entrepreneurs were given free license to innovate and create. Profit was never something to apologize for. Rather it was viewed as proof that the businessman offered customers something more valuable than the money they traded.
As a result, our economy is the world’s largest, bigger than the second (China) and third (Japan) combined.
We also have the world’s deepest, widest and most transparent financial markets.
Yet even our incredible free market system – the greatest wealth creator and anti-poverty program ever devised – is now under attack by woke capitalism.
But the pendulum will always swing back the other way, and people are eager to be free of this woke tyranny we’re living under.
The God Bless America ETF offers an alternative, one that takes the fight to the woke capitalists. And it’s just the beginning…
Things might look bleak now, but if Washington had given up at Valley Forge because the odds were stacked against him, we wouldn’t have the wonderful country we live in today.
He didn’t give up, so we have no right to. And we owe it to the people who built this country to fight against wokeness in boardrooms, schools and the public square.
You see, The mighty Magnificent Seven had an incredible run.
But the biggest gains might be DONE at this point.
The question is…
What’s next?
Where should investors move their money now?
Alex has the answer. He’s been researching a new set of stocks he expects to take over in the years ahead.
He says these stocks will dominate the next six years.
In fact, he’s predicted that $1,000 in each could turn into more than $1 million.
And remember, Alex correctly called four of the six best-performing stocks of the last 20 years.
He even wrote about Nvidia all the way back in 2020, when it was still just $0.11 split adjusted.
Alex sees some of the same characteristics – what he calls the Five Golden Metrics – in these new stocks.
Get his breakdown on all of them right here.
Good investing,
The Oxford Club Research Team