A Sinful way to Profit!

Saturday’s Globe and Mail had a delightful article by Carolyn Leitch, who explored the themes of sin and profit in an upcoming book by author Caroline Wexler.

Wexler has researched a number of stocks dealing with our less than ethical pursuits and offered up a strategic investment strategy to capitalize on the pursuit of moral decay. The book, Stocking Up on Sin: How to crush the Market with Vice Based Investing is full of helpful tips to capitalize on our penchant for gambling, sex, booze and other less than savory exploits.

For those folks who are tired of goody two shoes investment in safe but boring, ethical funds, the author offers up the sinful index. The Sindex provides 69 stocks offering nothing but the best of vice, avarice and social irresponsibility. Wexler claims that her index has outperformed the Standard and Poor’s 500 stock index by 42% over the last five years.

Condom makers, breweries, pharmaceutical giants, weapons makers and tobacco companies are among some of the chosen investment choices for the sinful investor. As Wexler explains in her book coming out at the end of the month, the investor wants to take advantage of stocks that will weather all economic conditions, and her Sindex consists of those companies that can make money in good time and bad.

Of course some investors go and let their conscience get the better of them, worrying about how their investment can play a role in the world. For them Wexler offers up this bit of advice to soothe the guilty ones. “Vice investing is profiting from the moral depravity or corruption of others, their moral faults – its not participating in the act?”

Or put another way, somebody’s going to get rich on all our faults, it may as well be you!

Something our business and political leaders seem to have picked up on, without benefit of written research. The book is just a chance for the average guy and gal to play catch up.