Market Medium

What happens when you take every carbon or net zero pledge and map them against CEO life expectancy? Well, two things: first, you find out your CEOs won't be the one who's accountable. Second, you find out that maybe they COULD be... if more of them were women. On Matt Makes.

If BlackRock has a "bro culture" problem, YOU have a "bro culture" problem

This week, as I wallowed through director board bios, I stumbled on a stupid question: which do you think investors prefer, board members with PhDs? Or board members with executive experience? Or maybe both? Turns out, I was wrong either way.

2021 Woke Data ESG Trends: Because there aren't enough of them

Using social network analysis on over 72,000 global members of publicly traded corporate boards tells you something. It tells you that your board is full of viral ideas, ideas that might (or might not) truly suck. Shoutout to Mike DiSabato of the MSCI ESG Now podcast for asking the questions.

A conversation with analysts on why your corporate governance analysis sucks: Netflix vs. Facebook

Matt gets his brainstorm on, but not alone - the brilliant analyst Dana Sasarean joins him for an unfettered look at carbon targets in 2050, why they're necessary, and how governing long-termism is a problem. But maybe, if Matt's dumb ideas are possible, it's manageable?

Call it an ESG adjacent analysis? I went down a rabbit hole: what happens when an older, rich venture capitalist gives a 20 year old tons of money and calls them tech messiahs? They become incubated geese, that's what. A quick analysis of governance in newly minted IPOs looking a VC influence.

ESG analysis has a tendency to be driven by arbitrary themes. But there's a concrete way to look at a company BEFORE you get to ESG, and that's stakeholders. Today, dissecting Amazon through a stakeholder lens tells a fuller story of where ESG risk could become ESG cost - and what could trigger it.

Is Boeing a manufacturer? Or are they a tech company? Matt does an ESG breakdown of Boeing.

Interview: Yale Professor Jeff Sonnenfeld, Damion Rallis. On today's show, society has always had heroes, and it's not uncommon to hear CEOs talked about in heroic terms. The problem? What happens when you institutionalize heroes... before the heroism? A conversation with Yale Professor and CNBC contributor Jeff Sonnenfeld about CEO heroes, frauds, and dual class founders. Then, a conversation with Damion Rallis about if we deserve what we get for institutionalizing heroism.

A study last year by Sakis Kotsantonis of KKS Advisors and Professor George Serafeim suggest the ESG data landscape is chaos, and companies need to own their ESG narrative until it gets regulated. But is chaos a bad thing? And are we setting the bar higher for ESG than "old finance"? Sakis and Damion Rallis of the Business Pants podcast join the Market Medium for a story of data and standards.

The market is the ultimate protagonist in our lives, from global trends like climate change or labor shifts to your overpriced rideshare during customer surges. It's a boogeyman and an excuse. But it's also, like everything, chock full of people and stories. And we're here to tell them, no matter how messy. We are Damion Rallis and Matt Moscardi, two stock market ESG analysts with more than two decades of combined experience with institutional investors, telling stories that put people back in investing. It isn't the market, it's the medium.