There are three main approaches to integrating sustainability in a portfolio: namely Exclusion, Scoring and Thematic.

Exclusion is currently the predominant framework used in the industry and entails excluding companies involved in certain activities, e.g., alcohol, tobacco, predatory lending. Scoring is a more sophisticated approach which, as its name suggests, scores companies on certain attributes grouped under three main factors: Environmental, Social and Governance (E, S and G). Finally, Thematic is regarded as an evolution of the first two, using an approach that focuses on one or more areas where societal or environmental needs are spawning commercial growth opportunities.

Today, the Responsible Investor uses the three approaches above to identify and invest in those companies that are making the world a better place. However, in our view, investors can improve their impact by incorporating short-selling into their investment strategy. Short-selling is often shunned as being everything that the Responsible Investor despises but we argue below how short-selling has an active role to play in making the world a better place.

Investors have an impact on the cost of a company’s capital when they deviate from the weight of the security versus a benchmark. As an example, if certain investors underweight a company versus a benchmark, or divest from the security, other investors will need to overweight that security (versus the same benchmark) in their portfolio to allow the market to clear.¹

Since the latter are carrying a higher level of risk in terms of increased portfolio concentration, they will require a higher return as compensation. This higher return translates into a lower valuation, which in turn can be interpreted as a higher cost of capital for the security.

Consistent with this thesis, a recent working paper by Darwin Choi and co-authors provides some empirical evidence that financial institutions who reduce their exposure to high-emitting firms cause price pressure (i.e., lower the valuations of such firms) and hence increase the cost of capital.

Short-selling amplifies the increase in the cost of capital by allowing investors to underweight a holding even more versus a benchmark, hence requiring the rest of the market to require an even higher compensation to hold the stock. In a 2020 paper, Qingbin Meng et al. found that short-selling generally worsens a firm’s financial constraints by reducing its ability to raise cheap and overvalued external capital.

Moreover, short-selling allows investors to lower their portfolio’s overall exposure to certain adverse sustainability metrics, e.g., carbon emissions. Although, we would encourage the transparent reporting of metrics separately for longs and shorts.

Thematic investment strategies can identify investment trends that are either tailwinds or headwinds for companies, and hence make use of short-selling to implement themes that are likely to face headwinds, e.g., regulatory risk, from the growing adoption of sustainability issues.

With regards to the environment, an example of a strategy that we at Fulcrum believe can help investors increase their impact is supporting Rail companies at the expense of Trucking companies, i.e., going long rail transportation versus truck transportation. Rail transportation is taking share from other modes of transportation. It is far more energy efficient (and hence lower emissions) than trucks due to reduced frictional energy losses (at the expense of flexibility) and hence is a credible alternative over longer distances. Meanwhile, the transition of trucks to alternative fuels remains a long way off.

Along the same lines, societal trends can also be pursued. Increasingly, health and environmentally conscious consumers are eschewing processed food, putting traditional brands under threat and facing a growing challenge from ecommerce sales; for example, new local and niche brands can establish themselves and connect with consumers more quickly, especially in the organic space. Meanwhile, valuations can become stretched on the back of perceived quality and face coming under increased pressure as interest rates rise. In our view, Responsible Investors can short-sell processed food companies versus healthier (and climate-friendlier) food companies to generate a positive impact on the world.

Responsible Investors can maximise their positive impact on the world by making full use of all the tools and information at their disposal, in terms of investment strategies, time horizons and financial instruments.

In our view, short-selling is an effective tool that can help improve investors’ impact on the world and amplify the effect of increased cost of capital, compared to a long-only solution that simply reweights (or excludes) securities. Moreover, it can increase a portfolio’s exposure towards those companies that are benefitting from sustainability trends vis-à-vis those that are facing headwinds, e.g., stranded assets.