MAGA fund - that invests in firms that support the GOP - is OUTPERFORMING ESG ... trends now

A MAGA fund that invests in firms supporting GOP values is outperforming the woke ESG funds touted by the Biden administration by 15 percent. 

Point Bridge Capital, which goes by the ticker MAGA, was found to be doing better in the markets this year than both the ESG Funds and S&P 500, according to a a Bloomberg analysis. 

The company, which holds $1.45 billion in assets, stands on the opposite end of the political spectrum to ESG funds, which focus investments on principles of environmental, social and corporate governance. 

MAGA fund founder Hal Lambert, a former portfolio manager at Credit Suisse and JP Morgan who worked on Donald Trump's inaugural committee, said his fund has been successful because it isn't bogged down by 'woke nonsense.' 

Speaking to DailyMail.com, Lambert blasted ESGs as a United Nations-backed movement to embed socialist values into America's corporations. 

'The movement is not based on investment principles,' Lambert said. 'They’re pushing it to change the culture of corporate America that will ultimately hurt investors.' 

He also warned that the end goal of the movement will see company's lean to the left and cause Republican lawmakers to lose out on corporate backing. 

Lambert, who's based in Fort Worth, Texas, had helped raise money for a number of Republican lawmakers, including Ted Cruz and Rick Perry in 2015. 

Then in2017, Lambert gathered a list of 150 companies in the S&P 500 whose Political Action Committees and employees have given the most to Republican candidates, which were complied into the MAGA fund.  

The fund's top investments are in the J.M. Smucker Company; military developers Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Huntington Ingalls Industries, and insurance companies AllState and Globe Life.   

The company also has big investments in Conocophillips, Alaska's largest crude oil producer that  has seen its stock shoot up by more 71 percent this year amid spiking oil and gas prices.

Lambert said it was this embrace of oil and energy that has allowed his company to avoid the pitfalls of ESG and the S&P 500, which has less investments in the energy sector than ever before. 

The MAGA fund has also been spared by the recent fall of the tech sector marred by supply chain woes as it only has a 3 percent stake in the industry as opposed to ESG funds and the S&P 500, which invest heavily in the sector.  

Lambert said that companies are aware of the loses that come with embracing ESG, noting that a Chief Finance Officer of a major company told him that it's taking a toll on his ability to focus on profit.  

'CEOs and CFO’s completely hate this. I have a friend who’s a CFO and he’s told me he’s lost so much time dealing with this woke nonsense,' Lambert said. ;It’s effectively hurting his focus on growing earnings and revenue.' 

The MAGA fund founder ultimately predicted that companies could face lawsuits for failing their 'fiduciary responsibility to investors' after adopting ESG guidelines. 

Lambert also warned Republicans to act now against ESGs because the movement would threaten their ability to raise funds for campaigns. 

'The end goal for the ESG movement is to cut off corporate funding to Republican candidates,' he said. 'A company will adopt the ESG guidelines, and then someone will say, "How can we give to these GOP candidates if they're against our new principles because they stand with oil and gas."’ 

More than three-quarters of the woke ESG funds the Biden administration is encouraging retirement planners to invest in have underperformed in the first half of this year.

A study by Investment Metrics found that a whopping 78 percent of global funds focusing on the principles of environmental, social and corporate governance fell more than 15 percent below their benchmarks in the first six months of 2022.

At the same time, just 3 percent of the 166 US-listed ESG stock funds reported having positive returns as of September, Bloomberg reports, as woke tech firms these funds tend to support have had to lay off employees while oil and gas companies they tend to shun have seen their profits soar as war continues to rage.

But the Biden administration is now allowing fiduciaries to invest retirement money in these failing funds, which may focus more on social and environmental policies than returns on investment.

Lambert has warned investors to avoid these funds and instead focus retirement investments on the energy sector.  

Nearly $40billion has been invested over the past decade in US-listed funds that emphasize ESG principles, Bloomberg found, with the amount allocated specifically to sustainable investment funds reaching $2.5trillion.

Those funds were booming for years as a result, with their assets nearly doubling from 2019 to 2021.

And over the past five years, funds holding shares in companies that emphasize sustainability and growth rose at an average rate of 14 percent.

But things are starting to change on the global scale, as Bloomberg's Global Bond Index shows that the total returns on ESG bonds dropped 15.2 percent from September 2021 to September 2022.  

Returns on funds that do not prioritize ESG principles, however, only plummeted 14.7 percent. 

Meanwhile, the Point Bridge GOP Stock Tracker, which invests in companies that support the Republican Party was only down by about 3 percent.

Now, investors are starting to shun ESG funds, pouring only $4.5billion into them during the first eight months of the 2022 — after injecting the funds with more than $32billion over the past two years.

At least seven funds have now been forced to shutter, like LDEM — a fund that invests in companies being started in developing countries. It was already struggling, however, with its assets plunging 91 percent in just two days last year.

Experts say the sudden downturn in ESG fortunes are a direct result of their investing principles.

ESG funds tend to favor woke tech companies in Silicon Valley that have mission statements about diversity, equity and inclusion while they shun those that produce fossil fuels.

But soaring inflation and rising interest rates have hampered tech companies over the past few months, as even tech giants like Facebook and Twitter have had to layoff employees. 

At the same time, the ongoing war in Ukraine has set the prices of oil and gas soaring across the world, directly benefiting firms that invest in these fossil fuels.

Those trends are likely to continue as economists warn that a recession is on the horizon, with Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan expecting high prices to continue for at least two years.

Still, the Biden administration seems to be supporting these failing funds by allowing retirement plan investors to focus on ESG investing - even if they provide a lower return for Americans.

The move, which was announced on Tuesday, reverses a rule imposed by Trump in 2020 that forced employers to prioritize profit when making 401(k) investments. 

Advocates of the change suggest that companies can be more profitable than their competitors when they treat their workers fairly and think about environmental impact.

The change — set to go into effect in just two months — is welcome news for those involved in pushing ESG investing, including major financial institutions and most notably BlackRock, which is in charge of the retirement plan assets of around 35million Americans. 

BlackRock — the world's largest asset manager that handles about $10trillion — and other major asset managers have been incorporating ESG investments in a public show of their sustainability commitment. 

But critics say the change allows asset managers to

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