Why don't we invest in emerging markets?

Over the past year, we’ve been searching hundreds of investment funds with our partner Matter and here’s what we found:

• Popular “ESG” funds still contain traces of oil and gas companies.

• We can count on one hand the fund options available in the US that met our standard. We use them to build our Illuminate portfolios.

The search got even harder for funds focusing on emerging markets, think companies in Latin America or Asia. The truth is we have never been able to find an emerging markets fund with 0% exposure to fossil fuel companies - the very best option still held Petrobras, the Brazilian oil giant.

So it’s not you, it’s the market.

Today, Illuminate portfolios don’t include emerging markets allocations, it’s a trade-off we had to make until we can find a fund that won’t sneak in oil and gas companies.