With climate experts offering dire forecasts about the world’s future and many fund managers offering investment products adhering to environmental, social, and governance principles to combat the effects of climate change, one nascent fund manager has had enough and is pushing back.
Strive Asset Management, which was launched this year with the goal of pushing back against so-called “stakeholder capitalism,” launched the Strive U.S. Energy ETF (NYSE Arca: DRLL), a passively managed exchange-traded fund that seeks broad market exposure to the U.S. energy sector. This is Strive’s first investment product.
“The largest investment companies in the world are using your money, your investments, to tell American energy companies to produce less oil and to frack for less natural gas,” said Strive Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Vivek Ramaswamy in a video promoting the new ETF, adding that, through DRLL, investors can counter this “by mandating to drill more, to frack more.”
DRLL follows the Solactive United States Energy Regulated Capped Index, a subset of the Solactive GBS United States 1000 Index. Energy sub-sectors available for inclusion in the fund’s index include crude petroleum, natural gas, bituminous coal, hydroelectric power, nuclear electric power, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and related services up and down the U.S. energy supply chain.
Through corporate governance practices, including voting proxy shares and proactively engaging with management teams and boards, Strive looks “to unlock value in the U.S. energy sector by mandating companies to focus on profits over politics,” per the ETF’s description.
“We want iconic American brands … to deliver high-quality products that improve our lives, not controversial political ideologies that divide us,” said Ramaswamy, who recently appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
Strive includes PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel among its early investors.
DRLL has an expense ratio of 0.41%.
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