Values-Based Investing

With Clean Yield, you can meet your long-term financial goals while making a difference in the world.

Illustration of three people looking up at an enormous pie chart.

Sustainable Investment Approach

Clean Yield has developed a reliable and effective long-term investment strategy that favors diversified portfolios of high-quality stocks and bonds, supplemented with impact investments. We integrate a company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) profile into our analysis of its financial prospects and stock valuation. We are always looking for ways to maximize the positive impact our clients’ assets can make in the world, whether through proxy voting, shareholder activism, or impact investing.

Sustainable Asset Management Customized to Meet Your Needs

Our Services

Clean Yield’s approach to sustainable asset management is client-focused and collaborative. Your portfolio manager will work closely with you to identify and define your financial objectives and social values. We’ll then develop a custom investment policy statement that serves as a blueprint for how we will meet your goals. This living document outlines how much of the portfolio will be allocated to different asset classes and equity styles. We routinely revisit the document with you and/or your financial planner to ensure the allocations consistently reflect your evolving risk tolerance and financial needs.

Explore Our Sustainable Investment Approach

We work to develop a deep understanding of our clients’ needs and goals and build customized portfolios integrating the following strategies:

Public Equities Fixed Income Impact Investments Cash & Equivalents

Public Equities

Our investments in public equities are designed to give clients diversified stock market exposure, in line with Clean Yield’s sustainable investment criteria. Our approach is to focus on identifying attractive stocks while considering broader economic factors and context. We seek to build stock portfolios that meet clients’ long-term needs by investing in high-quality companies across the market capitalization and economic sector spectrums. We particularly like companies that are well-managed, with robust profit margins and an emphasis on sustainability-focused products and services. We believe that companies adhering to high standards of environmental, social, and corporate governance have a competitive advantage and will be industry and stock market leaders.

In addition to these financial attributes, companies must meet Clean Yield’s rigorous environmental and social criteria to be added to our client portfolios.

Learn More About Our Sustainability Criteria >

Fixed Income

Illustration of a circle on the top left and a line graph on the bottom right.

We primarily construct the fixed-income portion of client portfolios from high-quality U.S. government agency, municipal, green, or social bonds. In recent years, the improved availability of social bonds issued by community development finance institutions has allowed us to increase their use in client portfolios. We mainly buy investment-grade bonds and typically ladder maturities to reduce the risk that interest rates might be unattractively low when bonds mature and need to be reinvested. When attractive, we also may use preferred stock shares as an income-boosting fixed-income alternative in accounts. We do not buy U.S. Treasury securities due to the high portion of government spending that goes to the military; we instead buy U.S. government agency bonds that finance housing or agriculture.

Impact Investments

We offer a variety of private impact investments as part of portfolios when it aligns with a client’s risk tolerance and liquidity needs. Impact investing refers to the placement of capital in enterprises or vehicles designed to generate social and environmental impact as well as financial return. These investments typically make up 1% to 10% of an account and range from relatively low-risk community investment promissory notes to higher-risk private equity and debt offerings of businesses helping move society toward a just, regenerative future.

Cash & Equivalents

We usually maintain cash reserves of 5% to 20% in our portfolios. Though we are not “market timers” who jump in and out of markets, there are times when conditions are extraordinarily favorable or unfavorable. This is a business of probabilities, not certainties, and when market prices are substantially above long-term norms (reducing likely future returns), we will build up cash reserves toward the high end of the range so that when more favorable opportunities arise, we will have the means to take advantage of them.