2021 Oak City Retreat: Human Rights and Freedom

This post is part of a 5-part series highlighting some of the most impactful sessions from our inaugural retreat in the NC mountains in the spring of 2021. In our first year and given the COVID-related constraints, this was mostly a gathering of some foundations (staff + boards) and investment managers that we know well. As the retreat expands, we hope that it will be an encouragement to other foundations, endowments, and family offices to see the collective influence that capital can have on a broken world. We also hope it will be an encouragement to up and coming managers: that there are institutional investors excited to use capital to love our neighbors and bless the world.

Dennis Hammond: Human Rights and Freedom

While the question of investing in China has come to the forefront of many conversations today, more than 2.5 years ago the Oak City team began excluding China from our international and emerging markets strategies. Hong Kong unrest, Uighur prison camps, one-child policy (resulting in incidences of forced abortion or infanticide), human organ harvesting, the installation of roughly 176 million surveillance cameras in China, Chinese Communist party control, China citizen grading scores, persecution of Muslims and Christians and many other issues drove our concern around this topic.

As a result, we created (with a big assist from Veriti Management) a portfolio that removed China from the MSCI ACWI ex US index, which covers developed and emerging markets outside of the US. We found that in the preceding 3 years and 8 years, excluding China had very little effect on risk or return.

Dennis Hammond, founder of Hammond Associates in St. Louis and now Head of Institutional Investments at Veriti Management, joined Ross Roggensack to discuss this strategy and the ways we can expand it going forward. Avoiding investments in China is a good start, but is it enough?

This blog should not be copied, distributed, published or reproduced, in whole or in part. All economic and market forecasts are as of the date of distribution. Oak City Consulting is not providing any financial, economic, legal, accounting, or tax advice or recommendations in this blog. The information contained in this blog does not constitute investment advice or an offer to buy or sell securities from Oak City Consulting to the reader and should not be relied upon to evaluate any potential transaction. In addition, the receipt of this blog by any reader is not to be taken to constitute such person a client of Oak City Consulting. Oak City Consulting makes no representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the statements or any information contained in this blog and any liability therefore (including in respect of direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage) is expressly disclaimed.

Veriti Management LLC (“Veriti”) is an investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. To the extent this blog includes material from Veriti, please click here for disclosures.