The Daily Signal - Conservatives Now Have an Option to Avoid Investing in Left-Leaning Companies

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

If you invest in an index fund, a mutual fund, or an exchange-traded fund, you probably have holdings in hundreds of different companies, some of which may be promoting an agenda at odd with conservative values.  After 25 years of experience in the field of investments, Bill Flaig decided to create Ridgeline Research to provide conservatives with investment options that align with their beliefs. American Conservative Values ETF (NYSE ticker: ACVF) is a fund to do just that. It currently boycotts the 20 politically active companies for taking positions at odds with conservative beliefs. Flaig joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to explain how conservatives can begin investing in companies that uphold their values and keep their hard-earned money out of the hands of companies that lean to the left. Also on today's show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a new children’s book series called "Buck the Chuck" that aims to teach kids about the value of freedom. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, December 21st. I'm Robert Pluey. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, Rob talks with Bill Flagg, the founder and CEO of Ridgeline Research. They are providing conservatives with investment options that align with their values. We also have your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a new children's book series that aims to teach kids about the value of freedom and American ideas. Before we get to today's show, Rob and I want to thank you. for your support for the Daily Signal. Each day, the Daily Signal brings you the news that you can trust on the most important

policy debates facing our country. We cut through the liberal media spin and provide honest, thorough, and responsible reporting on today's most critical issues. But we can't do it without the help of patriots like you. Consider giving a tax-deductible contribution to the Daily Signal and help us build conservative momentum this year and beyond. Just visit DailySignal. com slash donate. With your help, we can build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity,

and civil society flourish. Now stay tuned for today's show. Coming up next. We are joined on the Daily Signal podcast today by Bill Flag. He's the founder and CEO of Ridgeline Research. And he provides investors with a plan that aligns with their beliefs and values. Bill, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Good morning. Well, let's start by talking about the mission of Ridgeline research and how you are helping investors make those choices that align with their priorities. Yeah, sure. Thank you. I've been an investment professional for over 25 years working in mutual funds and ETFs. And over that time period, as my career and skill set has grown, I've noticed a lack of product for politically conservative people. A lot of socially responsible and ESG products

developing for, you know, that class of investor progresses, but nothing for us. So I finally decided to take the entrepreneurial jump and start my own company, Ridgeline Research with the mission of giving investment products, specifically built for politically conservative investors. So let's break that down into a little bit more detail. There are obviously conservatives out there who might be unknowingly supporting causes. that don't align with their values. For instance, I might be one of them in terms of my investments in certain mutual funds or index funds.

Can you walk our audience through some of the ways that that might happen in ways that we might not realize? Yes, that's exactly the case. There's this awareness that I'm trying to raise in addition to the advocacy. Anybody who's invested in an index or a passively managed mutual fund or ETF exchange traded fund, exchange traded fund, that fund itself is investing in most likely to 500 or 1,000 largest U.S. corporations. So on your behalf, essentially, those funds are investing in, you know, some of the poster childs of liberal companies these days, Facebook, Twitter, the conservative media, New York Times, all the major media networks. So without knowing it, your money is being invested

in those companies. And with that awareness, which I'm trying to raise, I think investors, once they learn that, don't like it and are looking for alternatives, which I'm trying to provide. Well, I think you're absolutely right. If we could just pause for a moment and talk about index funds and ETFs, just a primer for our audience that might not be as familiar, can you explain what those terms mean to the lay investor? Sure, I'll do my best. So, So a mutual fund is essentially an investment product where everybody invests their money into the same mutual fund. There's a professional management team who actively manage it or follow an index. And an exchange traded fund is just a more recent twist on a mutual fund where it trades on an exchange all day long like a stock.

So a mutual fund you can only invest in at the end of the day. AETF you can buy any time of the day like a stock. And you're most likely going to see these types of products in your retirement account or your 401K, some type of long-term investment. So can you talk about some of the principles that the guides your work at Ridgeline Research and also how you do it in practice? Yes, certainly. There's several issues that we're trying to focus on.

And right now on our website, if you go there, you can see 20 companies that we, are boycotting, we will not invest in. It is a balancing act. If we didn't invest in every company that has a liberal agenda or sports liberal agenda, if you will, there really wouldn't be too many companies left to invest in. That's how far the industry has shifted to the left. So we're just picking the worst offenders, which we're boycotting, and we're trying to balance performance. So we still want to behave like an SSR, and P500 index or a large cap mutual fund, you would expect it to behave and put the advocacy in where we are avoiding or boycotting companies, you know, that support the liberal agenda.

So it's a balance between performance and advocacy. It's not 100% ideologically pure where we will only invest in, you know, the most conservative companies. It's a balance. And in looking at your website and we'll provide a link to all of our listeners so they can get more information about this. The boycott, which you mentioned, involves companies, some of whom you've already mentioned, like Facebook, as well as others like Walt Disney, AT&T, Nike.

Can you explain what's the decision-making process as to why you are boycotting them? Yes, we are trying to find representatives in each industry or sector of the economy. We don't want to just boycott companies that are in technology, which a lot of the names most readily come to mind there. Some of the issues that we are, you know, trying to focus on are, you know, companies that are, you know, hostile to conservative values are proudly liberal. You know, the liberal media, as I mentioned earlier, companies that disproportionately give to liberal candidates or liberal causes were sensitive to the Second Amendment and suppression of religious freedom. Well, Bill, the trend seems to suggest that more and more companies,

are taking political stands, either because their leadership, insist that they do, or there's public pressure to do so. As somebody who's been involved in this world for a long time like yourself, why do you think that it's been so, it's ratcheted up so much of late? And do you see that changing now that maybe we're past the presidential election of 2020, or is this just going to accelerate into the future? Well, I think the conservative investors and conservatives in general are It's not a phrase I've coined, obviously, but the silent majority, you know, I don't think we really wear our political beliefs on our sleeve. And I think we've become more quiet as times gone by. And I think the companies are, you know, able to pander to the left, if you will, without feeling that there's any consequence to it.

There's some companies, you know, Starbucks, for instance, you know, they're proudly liberal. if they lose market share of customers because of it, that's fine. That's part of their business strategy. The companies that are worse are the ones who are pandering to the left. I call it, greenwashing. And it's actually, there's some hypocrisy there because they're not even delivering what they say they're delivering to the left. But they are kind of counting on the fact that conservatives will just, you know, grin and bear it. So you have something called the American Conservative Values ETF. It's New York Stock Exchange, checker is ACVF. Tell us more about it and how somebody goes, if they're listening to this today

and they're motivated to take action, what's the next step? The ACVF can be purchased in any brokerage account. So anybody out there who is a self-directed investor and may have an account that e-trade, Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, they can just go into that account and buy it like they would a stock, anybody who's using a professional money manager would have to have that conversation and say this is a product that they're interested in. And you mentioned earlier, and I think this is probably important because investors, even though they might be conservative, they also want to make sure they're having a good return on their investment.

So what are some of the steps that you take to ensure that even though you're excluding some of these liberal-oriented companies, that they're still able to have strong performance? Yes, as I mentioned, we're very cognizant of that. We try to stay as diversified as possible. We don't want all of our boycotts to be, you know, focused in one economic sector. You know, as I said, I've been in the industry for, you know, too long, 25 plus years. And it's actually some, you know, pretty sophisticated portfolio construction techniques that can be used to minimize the risk, you know, the deviants from. and index, and we're employing that level of sophistication and constructing this portfolio.

Bill, if I could ask, you know, as somebody who has been involved for so long, what was there a motivating reason that you decided to embark on this path? Was there a specific incident or was just years of frustration that had built up? Yeah, it's just building. It's just been building up over time. it wasn't really until recently that I became firmly convinced that there's a, you know, a commercial opportunity to build a company and service this audience. You know, I think Ridgeline research in the American Conservative Values UTF is somewhat

analogous to what's happened in the advocacy space. There's a company accuracy in media, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with. And it was launched in 1969 to combat the liberal bias in media at that time. If you think back that far, it's kind of mind-blowing. And it wasn't until, you know, I'd say the mid-1990s where Fox News came along and realized there was an opportunity rather than just, you know, from an advocacy perspective, fighting what was going on, but that there's an audience that wants, conservative content and built a network to deliver it. So Fox had maybe is, you know, a little bit of

a black eye these days, but from its early days, its early beginnings, I think it's analogous to what I'm trying to accomplish with my venture. That's really great to hear. And as you said, it oftentimes is a silent majority that's out there. What have been some of the early feedback that you've received about the work that you're doing? What do investors have to say about this new option that they have? Yeah, I think there's a couple of levels. I think some people just based on the name alone are, you know, excited and want to be a part of it. You know, that's a little, that's wonderful and a little scary at the same time.

You know, I'm a very thoughtful person and I always do my research and due diligence. So even those people as happy as I am to have them jump on board with both feed, I encourage them to go to the website and understand exactly what they're doing. You know, I've got a lot of people who are, you know, watching it. They want to see that the performance is, that they're not giving up performance, that it is behaving like the SMP 500, and that will take a little bit of time. There's always a, you know, a lag when a new company starts out, you know, getting the message out. So these conversations have convinced me, you know, I only had market research prior to launch,

but these conversations that I'm having now, you know, absolutely convince me that there's a demand for the product. It's really upon me and the management team to execute and get the word out. You know, no matter how wonderful the product is, if nobody knows about it, people can't buy it, can't invest in it. It's one of the reasons why I'm so excited to be speaking with you both today. Well, thank you so much, Bill. We appreciate the work that you've put into this. I think it's great to have an alternative out there, great to have competition, in the marketplace. That's what we as conservatives believe in, after all. Is there anything else

you'd like our listeners to know? No. I think I hit upon the points that I always want to hit upon. You know, you asked some really good questions. Didn't leave a lot out there. So, yeah, getting the word out. If you like the idea, not only invest in it and tell your friends, if you can't invest in it, at least raise awareness that it's out there for friends and family who maybe are in a position to to join us and help build this community of conservative, politically conservative investors. That's great. And Bill, John, we can stop the interview at this point.

But I did have one more question for Bill. When I go to post this on our website and I want to link to the boycott list, does the boycott list change? Like, will you be adding to the 20 or? Can I like list the 20 on our website? And should I make any notation about that? Do you update it every so often? Or is it pretty static?

It's, it hasn't changed since we launched on October 28th. But it can change. The fund is actively managed. It can change. You know, a company could come off the list or a company could join the list as, as quick as the news cycle, really. You know, Facebook. Facebook and Twitter, they've, you know, they're constantly in the news for, you know, suppression of freedom of speech, particularly conservative voices.

You know, Nike, again, you know, is in the news. So most, most of the ones who keep making bad news are, you know, some of these ones we are boycotting already. But it can be, you know, I'd say on a weekly basis, it could change based on the news cycle. Yeah, well, I think that it would be good to share that information. with our audience. So we'll be, we'll be sure to do so. This was great, Bill. Thank you for enlightening me. I mean, this is, this is fantastic that you're doing this, and we look forward to helping you get the word out. This is Virginia Allen, host of the Daily Signal podcast. I don't know about you, but YouTube is certainly one of my guilty pleasures. I really enjoy watching short videos on a variety of topics, so I'm always looking for videos that are actually educational and beneficial to me

in some way. And the Daily Signal YouTube channel never disappoints. There is so much binge-worthy content from policy and news explainers to documentaries. If you're not driving, go ahead and pull out your phone and subscribe to the Daily Signal YouTube channel so you can be in the know on the issues you care about most. You can also search for the channel by going to YouTube.com slash Daily Signal. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show. Virginia, who's up first? We recently received a couple new five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. One listener writes, honest source. I am so grateful for this podcast. It is awesome to be able to have a place to go to get honest and current information.

And InGov writes, very timely, great explanations of the most pressing issues facing the country today. Virginia, we sure do appreciate those five-star reviews. And if you're listening, please take a moment. do one yourself. And in response to Jarrett Stepman's piece, despite being closed, San Diego schools descend into wokeness, yak writes to us, this is beyond outrageous. How in the world do rabid liberal officials get away with pushing their skewed perspectives, reverse racism, and false values onto the citizens who are paying the lawful portion of their salaries? Your letter could be featured on next week's show. So send us an email at letters at daily signal.com. Do you have an interest in public policy? Do you want to hear some of the biggest names

in American politics speak? Every day, the Heritage Foundation host webinars called Heritage Events Live. Webinar topics range from ethics during the COVID-19 pandemic to the CARES Act and the economy. These webinars are free and open to the public. To find the latest webinars and register, visit heritage.org slash events. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us on this Monday. Over to you. Thanks so much, Rob. Christmas is just around the corner. And if you're still looking for the perfect gift for your niece, nephew, child, or grandchild, then you're going to want to check out Buck the Chuck children's book series. Lynn Yelton and her husband, Jeff, wrote and illustrated the clever book series

to explain the concept of freedom to children. After the Yelton's spent a year, fighting against their local government's attempt to implement a new set of regulations that would severely limit what residents could and could not do with their own property, Mrs. Yellen and her husband decided they needed a way to teach children why freedom in America is so important and worth fighting for. I recently spoke with Mrs. Yelton about the books and the character Buck the Chuck. Take a listen. The series stars a lovable but reluctant hero, a woodchuck named Buck, who finds himself at odds with freedom thieves. The boozo boops, as the bad guys are called,

are pot-bellied, whisker-faced catfish who live in the swamp and dress rather nicely. In each adventure, Buck tackles his challenge with help from his guardian whistlepig sore. Mrs. Yelton explained to me that as she began to write the books, she had to decide how to define freedom in a way that children would understand. And the definition she finally settled on was living the life you choose without being bossed around too much. With that definition in mind, the books use the characters Buck and Thor to explain why freedom is truly worth fighting for.

So what we've tried to do since freedom is an abstract concept is break it down into child-friendly, bite-sized pieces that kids can grasp. Like what is life like with something and then without it? Kids also have an innate sense of fairness, so we use these ideas as we explain just what it is that has made the United States of America, the shining city upon a hill. For example, in the first book, Buck the Chuck, the fight for freedom, we start with the idea of freedom itself. Buck is spooked by the wicked boozleboops who have come to steal freedom from the residents of Chuckville just like they did in the swampy forest. When Thor suggests Buck fight for freedom, Buck wonders what freedom looks like. Buck has always lived with freedom, so he takes it for granted, appreciating its value only when he sees others without it. We use color to make the point.

The town of Chuckville is colored bright with the opportunity freedom offers. In contrast, life in the swamp where the bad guys live is drab gray, because its residents gave away freedom's colors for the false promise of something better. The first book, Buck the Chuck, and the second book, Buck the Chuck, Let Freedom Sing, can be found on Amazon. So be sure to check them out this Christmas season. Virginia, thanks so much for bringing us that story. As somebody who's read the books to my own kids, I can give a first-hand testimonial,

but they are really good. And I think that they state the issues in a simple way that kids can really understand. So that's obviously valuable for parents as they're. They're working through so many things and just need a little bit of a boost to teach their kids about the importance of freedom. And they are just beautifully illustrated. So they make a great gift for kids young and old. Well, we're appreciative of the Yelton's.

And thanks again for their work and the good things that they are doing for so many families. We're going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rikoshae Audio Network. All of our shows are available at daily signal.com slash podcasts. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. And be sure to listen every weekday by adding The Daily Signal podcast as a part of your Alexa Flash briefing. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review and a five-star rating. It means a lot to us and helps us spread the word to other listeners.

And be sure to follow us on Twitter at Daily Signal and Facebook.com slash the Daily Signal News. Have a great week. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than how. a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Rob Blewey and Virginia Allen, sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geiney, and John Pop. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.