Do vice funds out-perform the share market?

The Vice Fund has outperformed the S&P 500 since 2004. They invest in sinful stocks as its managers describe it:

Designed with the goal of delivering better ​risk-adjusted returns than the S&P 500 Index. It invests primarily in stocks in the tobacco, alcohol, gaming and defence industries. Vice Funds believe these industries tend to thrive ​regardless of the economy as a whole.

The Vice Fund was founded in 2002 to specialise in socially irresponsible stocks such as gambling, alcohol , tobacco and defence contracting. The Vice Fund is not recession proof, but did do better in the 2009 market crash.

The Vice fund also has high management fees of 2%. Americans can buy Vanguard’s or Fidelity’s index funds and pay only 0.1% in expenses. The Vice Fund  may have buckled under the heat because it has rebranded:

The Vice Fund is now called the Barrier Fund. The investment strategy and the portfolio manager have not changed… The Barrier Fund invests in companies, both domestic and foreign, within industries that have significant barriers to entry.

All is not lost, the Ave Maria Catholic Values Fund beat the market almost as handily as Vice.

To confuse further, the Catholic Values Fund revealed that it shared investments in defence contractors with the Vice Fund. The Vice Fund invested in staid Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft.

HT: Investing in Vice.

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