Nanuk pitches 'climate moneyball' approach to sustainable investing
Nanuk Asset Management CIO Thomas King has laid out 12 key areas of growth for climate investors during the energy transition.
There’s nothing like a title “Climate Moneyball” and a free lunch to convince financial advisers to attend an ESG seminar.
Nanuk Asset Management chief investment officer Thomas King even admitted that this was part of the thinking when crafting the firm's annual sustainable investing market update. In a 40-minute presentation, King drew on an analogy to the Hollywood film Moneyball, about a data driven approach to recruiting undervalued players in baseball, to argue there are ways to improve the odds of success in sustainable investing. Like the players Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) assembled for the Oakland A's in the movie, the hype has worn off sustainable growth stocks over the past year, with share prices and valuations plumbing new lows.
“I don’t think it's a slam dunk or a home run to invest in sustainably themed equities today. Things aren’t so egregiously cheap at this price. But I do think the odds of success in the medium term are now good enough that they shouldn’t be ignored.”
He said the fundamentals of these companies largely remained sound. “Over the last two or three years, sustainably-themed equities have gone from arguably being slightly expensive to now positioned in a way where it’s reasonable to think that the performance will be in line with or better than the rest of the market for the medium term.”
