Obscene Profits

[Josefus]

I don’t do any real investing yet, but I want to.
One of the things that interests me is Ethics and Investing.
Would you buy companies that profit from porn? What about tobacco and alcohol?
Oil companies that finance wars?
How do you draw the line?
Or do you just buy any company that you think can make you money?

[Jaboney]

At the moment, I leave it to the Pixie and her reading of chicken entrails. Totally irrational, but I’m not going to argue with 205% returns.

Later, I’ll invest in any company save those that kill, despoil, or piss me off. Cargill, bad. RJR Renolds, bad. Google and Yahoo, almost equally soft on China, but I like Google and want to jump on Yahoo’s still beating though whithered heart, so: good, bad.

[Mr_PBH]

Or do you just buy any company that you think can make you money?

That works. I don’t believe I have invested in porn, although I did own Netflix when it first came out, and they offer porn delivered to your doorstep.

Philip MOrris has been very good to me and my family.

The safest bet is buy what you can understand and explain in two sentences. For example, “People smoke and drink in good times and bad.”

They also eat shit food. I own KRAFT as well.

If porn companies had been listed in the NYSE, there’d be a lot more millionaires out there IMHO.

You can buy WWE too! Fake sports with a real dividend.

[StuartCa]

If you want to make money invest in things that are considered unethical such as weapons, porn, tobacco or alcohol. Not that I consider porn, tobacco or alcohol unethical.

Ethical investment is all very worthy but quite frankly I’d rather make the cash.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/archive/features/27411/get-rich-with-unethical-investment.thtml

[Jack_Burton]

[quote=“StuartCa”]If you want to make money invest in things that are considered unethical such as weapons, porn, tobacco or alcohol. Not that I consider porn, tobacco or alcohol unethical.

Ethical investment is all very worthy but quite frankly I’d rather make the cash.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/archive/features/27411/get-rich-with-unethical-investment.thtml[/quote]

I was reading the article in your link:

There was, for example, the firm run by the Suffolk farmer David Lucas, which makes gallows to be deployed by Third-World African dictators — Gaddafi and Mugabe, for example. He does a terrific trade despite resembling one of the backwoods people in the film Deliverance. He does multiple gallows, too, so you can hang five dissidents in one go. All his products are exquisitely wrought from the finest English oak. ‘The beauty of it is,’ Mr Lucas told a rather unhappy reporter from the Guardian, ‘you can use it over and over again.’

[Josefus]

Thanks for that article.
Here’s another one: Can Porn Go Public(ly Traded)?

[Mr_PBH]

Wasn’t there a whorehouse in Oz that went public?

[StuartCa]

[quote=“Jack Burton”]
I was reading the article in your link:

There was, for example, the firm run by the Suffolk farmer David Lucas, which makes gallows to be deployed by Third-World African dictators — Gaddafi and Mugabe, for example. He does a terrific trade despite resembling one of the backwoods people in the film Deliverance. He does multiple gallows, too, so you can hang five dissidents in one go. All his products are exquisitely wrought from the finest English oak. ‘The beauty of it is,’ Mr Lucas told a rather unhappy reporter from the Guardian, ‘you can use it over and over again.’[/quote]

Would it be unethical to invest in his products or those of the pharmacists who make the drugs that kill US prisoners or rope manufacturers used in the gallows?

[Mr_PBH]

J, try these for size:

csmonitor.com/ethicalinvesting?s=wamln

[cranky_laowai]

Those of you who just don’t give a damn, here’s a listed company probably headed for some money: [quote]Li Runsen, the powerful technology director of China’s ministry of public security, is best known for leading Project Golden Shield, China’s intensive effort to strengthen police control over the Internet.

But last month Mr. Li took an additional title: director for China Security and Surveillance Technology, a fast-growing company that installs and sometimes operates surveillance systems for Chinese police agencies, jails and banks, among other customers. The company has just been approved for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company’s listing and Mr. Li’s membership on its board are just the latest signs of ever-closer ties among Wall Street, surveillance companies and the Chinese government’s security apparatus.

Wall Street analysts now follow the growth of companies that install surveillance systems providing Chinese police stations with 24-hour video feeds from nearby Internet cafes. Hedge fund money from the United States has paid for the development of not just better video cameras, but face-recognition software and even newer behavior-recognition software designed to spot the beginnings of a street protest and notify police…[/quote]
An Opportunity for Wall St. in China’s Surveillance Boom

[Jaboney]

About ethical investing.

[url=http://tw.forumosa.com/t/worth-dying-for/40345/1 a company with a leg up tapping Iraqi (now Kurdish?) oil in a relatively stable region of the country, meaning (har har… not ) that they’re posed to make a killing.

Normally, I’d be happy to see outside interests investing in the Kurds’ future, and helping them to build it. But in this case? Yea or nay?

(btw, the question is a hypothetical because the company is privately held.)

[Dragonbones]

What, you want advice on ethical investing from the Goddess of Fornication & Prostitutes?