Kevin Durant the "War Criminal" and a post on Ethical Investing
You know what TPOT stands for? If you do, you're too online. If you don't, it means "this part of twitter"--certain segments of twitter are dedicated to one central subject. For many of us, it might be FinTwit--I presume most people reading this blog are interested in trading or are actual traders.
If you're not on TPOT (NBA), you just missed a big dramatic weekend. Kevin Durant, once caught for not properly using his burner and admitting why he left OKC in a now-infamous tweet, was caught again in social media shenanagians. He was using this burner called gethigher77 and in a group chat with all his twitter buddies slinging all kinds of crazy comments. He supposedly called his teammate Jabari Smith retarded and criticized another one of his teammates Alpi Sengun for being a bad shooter. He supposedly referred to former teammate Devin Booker and former coach Frank Vogel as "Hitler and Stalin". I don't know if these are confirmed to be real but KD's since these "relevations" has been deafening. Landmark day for TPOT NBA.
Also simultaneous to this burner discovery was the discovery that Kevin Durant had invested in a drone called Skydio that had sold surveillance drones to Israel. KD, known for getting in the gutter with all kinds of fans and media analysts on his main account, was arguing a Chiefs named "Pranav Srinaman". KD was arguing about rings and then Pranav brought up drone investments and then KD just never addressed it.
Apparently this is a big "gotcha". He's supporting the IDF by investing in this drone company. He's pro-genocide! One widely-circulated tweet even called him a war criminal.
Although I personally find his burner/groupchat drama to be absolutely hilarious (and also a sad commentary on how social media can consume the life of someone who has literally everything you could want), I find the drone part of it really lame.
I guess it brings up these hard questions, is there such a thing as ethical investing and should one strive to be an ethical investor? I think it's different if you found a company, work for a company, or promote the company. But if you passively invest in the company, I honestly don't care. It does not move the needle to me if one of your passive investment companies sold a product to an unsavory party.
Start with the S&P 500. Lots of morally unsavory companies in there. Yet almost every 401k will passively invest in the S&P 500. Some 401k plans are so limited, you can basically only choose between large cap (which is S&P 500 ) and bonds/cash. Would you hold your factory worker blue-collar parents morally liable for their pension holdings, because a handful among 500 companies in the index fund (Boeing? Raytheon? Lockheed?) sold a product to the IDF? I wouldn't. It's just the world we live in where products have become financialized and non-finance people don't have the time/ability to keep tabs on everything they invest in. And for the sake of intellectual consistency, I think it's ridiculous to criticize Kevin Durant for this. He didn't call up management himself to suggest they sell drones to these specific customers. It's more likely he has a money manager who makes these decisions. Although virtue-signaling has kind of become a loaded, annoying buzzword the last 8 years, I do think it applies in this case. TPOT NBA is simply not that financial literate to understand how easy it is to be tangentially involved with a company that does things that someone doesn't like.
I guess it brings up another question now. Now that he is aware that this company does this morally questionable thing, should he divest himself of this investment? I also think that is a gray area. I don't hold myself to that standard, personally. It involves having an opinion on too many complex political matters. And even then, what is not ethical to sell to a political entity you don't like? Food? Essential supplies? Maybe down the road there's something too evil and too unsavory that I can't ignore, I don't know, but I haven't hit that point yet.