Towards Aware and Values-Centered Investing

 

 

 

 

MQ University Course

MQU is pleased to offer “Towards Aware and Values-Centered Investing” to a new group of students. This ten-week, five-session course will begin on April 29, 2023 and conclude on July 16, 2023.

Course instructor Marco Vangelisti has updated his lectures and course materials. As such, course alumni are invited to register at a discounted rate! Pending approval, we expect the CFP CE for this updated version to be increased to 13.5 CE. Please see below for details.

Purpose

The course is designed to help financial advisors and financial planners gain an understanding of investment options and tools available, beyond those offered by Wall Street and ESG funds, to help clients truly align their financial and life plans with their values.

Instructor

Marco Vangelisti, CFA is a 100% Aware and No-Harm investor with a longstanding commitment to positive and restorative investing. He is a founding member of Slow Money and has been on the leadership team of the Slow Money Northern California Network from its inception to 2020.  
 
Prior to his shift in focus towards no-harm, positive and restorative investing, he spent 20 years in the finance industry, where he managed investment equity portfolios on behalf of large foundations and endowments and developed statistical risk models for equity and fixed income markets around the world.
 
Marco was a Fulbright scholar in Mathematics and Economics at the University of California in Berkeley, earned an MBA at the Milan-based “Enrico Mattei” school in his native Italy, and a Master of Fine Arts at the intersection of public art and ecology in the U.S. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and taught portfolio management, asset allocation, and performance and risk analysis at the San Francisco CFA Institute for 12 years. He is dedicated to democratizing financial literacy and aware no-harm investing. For additional information, please visit his website, ek4t.com.

Guest Lecturers

Money Quotient Consultant Johnny Roland will join Marco during the latter sessions of the upcoming MQU course to share his own personal insights about what he’s learned, implemented, and experienced in regard to his own retirement portfolio. Johnny is an alumnus of this course, having completed it in 2020. He is also working with Marco to develop a framework for financial planners to implement Marco’s strategy with their clients.

 

Course alumnus Angela Barbash, co-founder of Revalue (a fee-only RIA) will join Marco as a guest lecturer. She will share her practice management insights on lessons learned from incorporating regenerative investments into an existing practice of over 160 clients, how advisors can advocate for and contribute to the advancement of the necessary infrastructure, and the latest developments within the values-driven investment advisory ecosystem.

 

 

Click here to watch the first five minutes of Marco’s first lecture. In this video, he discusses his background and motivation, and shares information about the course structure and descriptions of each course session.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, there has been a growing sentiment of skepticism and mistrust aimed at Wall Street and our globalized and opaque financial system.  As a result, a growing number of clients and prospective clients are looking for ways to truly align their portfolios with their values, and are dissatisfied with investing all of their assets in the stocks and bonds of large multinational corporations, either directly or bundled in mutual funds even if labeled as ESG.

This disconnect between personal values and traditional investment choices is becoming even more glaring due to an increased awareness of the role our investments play in shaping the world we live in.

An honest evaluation of a majority of the stocks and bonds that comprise a typical socially- or environmentally-responsible portfolio would also fail to make a direct link to the issues and causes that your clients care about most.  In addition, even the sincerest and most well-intentioned values-based financial planning process often falls short in the implementation phase.

This course is designed for financial professionals who are ready to engage in out-of-the-box thinking regarding options for clients who want to  a) know their investments are doing no harm; and/or b) actively engage in making the world a better place via their investments.

Learning Objectives

Participants who complete the course requirements will:

  • Understand the role finance played in shaping the geopolitics of the last five centuries worldwide
  • Understand ­­the problems with our current financial system and the role our investments play in creating some of the largest societal challenges we collectively face
  • Understand how our economic growth and financial returns are subsidized by the destruction of the natural capital
  • Realize the importance of being aware of the non-financial impact of all our/our clients’ investments
  • Understand the money system, the money creation process, the banking sector’s incentives and activities, the role and actions of the central bank, their collective effect on asset class valuations and implications for investing
  • Develop a healthy skepticism of traditional capital market expectations and understand the importance of tactical asset allocation especially around time characterized by secular shifts
  • Integrate non-financial considerations and clients’ specific personal values into the portfolio management process
  • Understanding the importance of an expanded understanding of fiduciary responsibility to include the non-financial impact of clients’ investments
  • Introduce the concepts of meta-allocation and restorative investing component of a client’s portfolio

Course Requirements

Each session of this five-session, ten-week course will include:

  • A recorded lecture
  • Required reading
  • Online interaction with the instructor and students
  • Completion of an online learning assessment

This course is self-paced; however, online interaction via a discussion forum will include weekly deadlines.  All requirements for each session must completed within the 2-week time-frame.  Additional instruction will be included in the on-line virtual MQ Classroom platform (login information will be provided upon registration).

Session Overview

(*Note: you are responsible for obtaining your own copy of Sapiens; the other materials will be provided to you via downloadable links.)

Session #1              April 29 – May 14, 2023

Awakening to the Problems of Conventional Finance

Required Reading:
*Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Human Kind. Harper Collins Publishers 201; Chapter 16: The Capitalist Creed (pp. 305-333)

Key points:

  • Understanding the difference between capital and wealth
  • Understanding the role finance played in shaping the geopolitics of the last five centuries worldwide
  • Understanding the role the invention in the 16th century of the joint-stock corporation played in the imperial and colonial expansion of European nation states
  • Understanding the role join-stock corporations played in fueling the transatlantic slave trade
  • Understand how our economic growth and financial returns are subsidized by the destruction of the natural capital
  • Understanding the role our investments play in the erosion of the natural capital and therefore its inability to be sustained even within the typical time-horizon of an average client
  • Realizing the importance of being aware of the non-financial impact of all our/our clients’ investments

Session #2              May 13 – May 28, 2023

Understanding Ecological Limits, Money Creation and the Federal Reserve

Required reading:
*McLeay, Radia, Thomas. “Money Creation in the Modern Economy.”

Key points:

  • Understanding the hierarchical and hybrid nature of our money system
  • Understanding the process of money creation and destruction in a modern economy
  • Understanding the mechanism by which lending by commercial banks create new broad money in the economy
  • Overcoming the most common misconceptions about money
  • Understanding the role the central bank plays in managing the money supply
  • Understanding the types of risks limiting the lending activities of commercial banks
  • Understanding who determines the amount of base money in a modern economy
  • Understanding the effects of Quantitative Easing (QE) by central banks and why it had no effect on inflation for the first 12 years
  • Understanding the effects of QE on capital market valuations and on the real estate market
  • Understanding the impact the exceptionally low interest policy set by central banks had on the leverage in the overall financial system and the increase in systemic risk now that interest rates are being normalized
  • Understanding the effects on the stock market of the unprecedented share-bay back by public companies in the US in the last five years

Session #3            May 27 – June 18, 2023

(Please note: this session is one week longer due to the Memorial Day holiday)

Challenging Capital Markets Expectations – A Holistic Approach to Portfolio Management

Required reading:
*The Economist. “The Long and Short of It – Getting It Right in Two Years and Ten.”
*Rich, Nathaniel. “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.”

Key points:

  • Understanding the relationship between valuations and market returns
  • Expanding the understanding and definition of risk and return to include non-financial considerations
  • Determining the clients’ liquidity profile and needs
  • Understanding the difference between a client’s risk tolerance and her ability to bear risk
  • Assessing clients’ abilities to bear risk
  • Integrating non-financial considerations and the clients’ specific personal values into the portfolio management process
  • Understanding that the compensation for asset classes systematic risk changes over time and can turn negative
  • Developing a healthy skepticism of traditional capital market expectations and understanding the importance of tactical asset allocation especially around time characterized by secular shifts
  • Understanding the importance of an expanded understanding of fiduciary responsibility to include the non-financial impact of clients’ investments

Session #4              June 17 – July 2, 2023

Implementing Aware Values-Centered Investing

Required reading:
*Vangelisti, Marco. “What returns can we expect from local investing?”
*Christian, Leslie. “Prudent Woman”

Key points:

  • Understanding the implications of the difference in the rate of growth of the global economy vs. that of financial capital
  • Computing risk-adjusted returns of an investment given the probability of its possible return outcomes
  • Appreciating the motivations behind local investing
  • Understanding the added dimensions necessary to move towards holistic portfolio management
  • Defining no-harm investing and positive investing
  • Identifying no-harm investments and providing a few examples of them in various asset classes and risk categories
  • Identifying positive investments and providing a few examples of them in various asset classes and risk categories
  • Guiding clients through the process of building their Personal Investment Compass
  • Incorporating holistic portfolio management practices into their own processes

Session #5            July 1 – July 16, 2023

Restorative Investing and the True Path to Financial Freedom

Required reading:
*Tasch, Woody. Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money – Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered.

*Vangelisti, Marco. Social Justice Investing – Is there such a thing?

Key points:

  • Understanding the importance of soil health for the survival of Homo Sapiens
  • Understanding the link between conventional finance and soil erosion
  • Identifying restorative investments and providing a few examples of them in various asset classes and risk categories
  • Determine the prudent allocation to restorative investing based on the client’s ability to bear risk
  • Understanding the difference between impact investing and restorative investing
  • Understanding the psychological costs of participating in the positional game
  • Understanding the importance of an expanded understanding of fiduciary responsibility to include the non-financial impact of clients’ investments
  • Introducing the concepts of meta-allocation and restorative investing component of a client’s portfolio
  • NEW: Learning from an example of a restorative investment portfolio implemented by an MQ financial planner; learn lessons from a Slow Money journey in northern California

Q&A

We will also schedule two live online Q&A sessions with Marco Vangelisti! During these live one-hour sessions, we invite you to share your thoughts and ask questions.

Please note that these are optional sessions intended to supplement the course materials. Attendance is not mandatory, but we strongly encourage your participation.

Specific dates for these sessions are to be determined, but we anticipate scheduling one mid-course, and one shortly before the course concludes.

CFP CE Credit

13.5 CFP CE, pending acceptance by the CFP Board.

Requirements to receive the CFP CE include the following:

  • Watch all recorded video lectures
  • Complete assigned reading as listed above (*note: you are responsible for obtaining your own copy of Sapiens; the other materials will be provided to you via downloadable links)
  • Interact with instructor and fellow students via online discussion forum in response to posted topics and questions
  • Complete online learning assessments (acceptable passing score is 70%)

Tuition

This MQU course is open to MQ Partners and other financial professionals & financial educators.

MQ Partners: $400.00 Alumni MQ Partners: $200.00
MQ VIP Partners: $320.00 Alumni VIP Partners: $160.00
Full-Time Student $320.00 Alumni Full-Time Student: $160.00
Non-Profit $320.00 Alumni Non-Profit: $160.00
All Others: $500.00 Alumni All Others: $250.00

Additional Information

Want to learn more before committing to this multi-session, self-paced online course?

In this MQRE webinar recording, Marco Vangelisti and Johnny Roland provide insight regarding what students can expect if enrolled in the full 10-week, 5-session MQU course!