The alt-right economy is failing. Here is the real performance of anti-woke traders

That spirit is rewarded by the free market. On many fronts, we are quantitatively demonstrated business performance analysis that doing good for society does not come at the expense of doing good for shareholders, with clear examples from Going out of business in Russia in the public engagement of right to vote.

However, prominent political ideologues are using opportunistic attacks on iconic US businesses to present themselves as new anti-ESG businesses, and are reportedly building a “parallel economy” caters to conservative constituencies. But far from progress, an objective review of the facts suggests that these anti-wokester jokesters are building financially.

A little-known index fund provider, the American Conservative Values ​​ETF (ACVF), recently received a media attention frenzy for boycotting Batas in what they described as “pandering to the woke agenda,” confidently declaring that their boycott of Target would ensure that “The long-term performance of the target stock will suffer.”

The target stock is low, but in fact, the total assets of the fund Target amount to just $100,000–the equivalent of our Target nets every 20 seconds. In fact, ACVF’s total assets under management are relatively small $40 million-and more of them”boycotted” companies–including iconic All-American businesses such as Apple, MicrosoftDelta Airlines, American AirlinesDisney, Walmart, Coca Cola, Salesforce, and JPMorgan–have done very well since being targeted by the ACVF. Delta is up 10% this year, American is up 15% this year, Microsoft and Apple are both up 40% this year and Salesforce is up 60%. Thanks in part to the loss of these top-performing stocks, ACVF is the S&P 500 has underperformed by more than 2% this year until June 1. It’s no wonder that even politically conservative investors stay away from these anti-woke ETFs.

ACVF’s struggles pale in comparison to its bigger and better-known rival, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive Asset Management. We contacted both companies about our findings by phone and email, but their respective representatives directed us to numbers published on their websites, which we checked—and double-checked. .

Strive and ACVF’s business models are similar: They build exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, for mom-and-pop retail investors to passively track a basket of stocks, matching rather than trying to beat the wider market. Unlike hedge funds, these ETF providers don’t care if stocks go up, down, or sideways—instead, they get their money from fees charged to anyone who has their money in a Strive ETF. Most ETFs are very low-fee products—but anti-woke ETFs carry a premium. BlackRock ETFs, for example, typically charge around 0.03% pay. Strive’s fees are slightly higher at up to 0.41%–but nothing compared to ACVF’s 0.75% fee.

To survive in the long run, these new ETF providers must continue to attract new money from mom-and-pop investors. And that’s exactly what they seem to be struggling to do. All the evidence, apparently, shows that Strive is struggling to attract more inflow of investors beyond its original anchor investors after launching its ETFs last year. Its assets under management seem to have stagnated despite Ramaswamy’s strong media presence.

For example, the largest flagship ETF, the US Energy ETF effort (DRLL), had roughly the same amount of assets under management (AUM) as of June 1, $320 million, which it did when it was launched in August/September 2022, and its AUM less than 25% from the beginning of this year.

Fully half of Strive’s eight current ETF products–including Strive 1000 Growth ETFthe Effort 1000 Value ETFthe Effort 1000 Increase in Dividend ETF, and the Effort Small-Cap ETF–have less than $12 million in assets under management each, which is microscopic relative to industry standards–and below average compensation of a major CEO in most companies.

So it is not surprising that some of the many Praise CEOs are no-nonsense eliminating Strive’s attempts at “activism.” Ramaswamy became a judge in the corporate governance court. The mere mention of his name brings anything from a grin to bright gale of laughter among some corporate audiences.

One hopes that Strive is not on a path to fail as badly as some of Ramaswamy’s previous ventures, such as Axovanta company founded by Ramaswamy whose stock the price dropped from $200 to 40 centsor Campus Venture Networks, Ramaswamy’s much-hyped undergraduate startup that, despite his self-aggrandizement, he apparently sold for just a few thousand dollars, when his the tax returns are correct. Even one of Strive’s biggest financial backers, Bill Ackman, apparently ashamed and was quick to reject Ramaswamy. Meanwhile, the Quest is narrowed down to the quest “consulting contract” handouts from friendly politicians. Perhaps this helps explain why Ramaswamy is running his long-awaited presidential campaign: Nothing turns sagging business fortunes like a fresh burst of free publicity!

It is not only in high finance that these “parallel economy” startups flash. Attempts to create a new alt-right media ecosystem are similarly landing with a bang.

Perhaps most ominously, Donald Trump’s hyped Truth Social alt-platform exploded in value, with shares of the SPAC packaging (ticker DWAC) falling from $95 to $13 even as the former president flashed the this silent platform. Alt-right social media rivals like Gab and GabPay have struggled to gain traction, asking for donations through crowdsourced funding, while provocateur Alex Jones and his Infowars declared bankruptcy after a record $1 billion verdict for the Sandy Hook families. More importantly, One America News is now being dropped every major cable operator, partially driven by low audience, while its behemoth rival Fox’s the struggles are just beginning after a record $787.5 million Dominion settlement–with its board reportedly tired of deviating too far from the mainstream.

Efforts to expand the alt-right parallel economy in digital services and even physical goods are also hitting the ground running. ALMOST all major retailers from Bed Bath & Beyond to Walmart to Kohl’s to Costco cut ties with Mike Lindell’s MyPillow, which was shut down in just a few months the end of this in-person retail mall store while lost $100 million, according to Lindell himself. Former Trump personnel director Johnny McEntee’s project–an alt-right dating site, “The Right Stuff”– tormented even to its core constituency, whose mostly male counterparts were frustrated by the lack of female users, and seed funding from Peter Thiel reportedly scheduled which will run out in the next few months.

To the hammer, everything looks like a nail; and the efforts of some anti-woke activists to extrapolate political rhetoric to the economy can be caricatured. Ironically, the struggles of the country’s regional banks, such as SVB, Signature, and First Republic, are superstitiously attributed to “wokeism” and the facts—that these less diverse banks are not ready for The Fed’s interest rate hike and that larger, similarly “woke” banks are better insulated from these interest rate changes—ignored. This month, even the conservative New York Post was baffled by this month’s sudden outburst of anti-wokesters targeting the privately owned, highly spiritual, Christian values-guided restaurant chain. Chick-fil-A because, years ago, they promoted a long-time internal HR executive to oversee diversity and equal opportunity.

Despite positioning themselves as respectful guardians of free markets against government and social overreach, many anti-wokester jokesters seem to have forgotten the most basic imperative of capitalism: to make a profit. Ironically, the free market delivers the most damning verdict of all. The favorite “woke” targets of anti-ESG activists continue to climb to record highs in the economy, effortlessly rebuffing anti-woke attacks.

Clearly, despite all the hype and drama, there is little financial threat to mainstream business posed by the anti-woke economy. It’s not a truly homogeneous economy—it’s a scattered case of ideological grifters and struggling entrepreneurs. Their real talent seems to be in fast-talking media platforms to give them an unfair platform to unfairly target iconic pillars of US business. But as these anti-wokester jokesters struggle to gain financial traction, the numbers continue to disprove their claims.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is the Lester Crown Professor of Management Practice and Senior Associate Dean at the Yale School of Management.

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