Back in 2020, Goods Unite Us launched an index fund that trades on NASDAQ called the Democratic Large-Cap Core Fund, with the ticker DEMZ.

The fund is available on all major platforms including E-Trade, Robinhood, Schwab, and Fidelity.

DEMZ was, and still is, an unusual, first-of-its-kind financial product.

The fund can only include S&P 500 companies (i.e., the largest U.S. publicly traded companies), and the fund is benchmarked quarterly to the entire S&P 500, meaning it is designed to mimic the entire market. The fund also includes a 5% cap on the largest single stock and a sector balance that deviates no more than 5% from the S&P 500’s sector composition.

But here’s the rub:

The fund can only include an S&P 500 company’s stock if the company’s executives and political action committee have contributed more than 75% combined to Democratic federal politicians over the last 3 election cycles (roughly 6 years).

Put simply, DEMZ is the S&P—without the GOP.

There are about 120 companies in the S&P 500 that meet the DEMZ threshold, but the fund typically only includes around 40 to 6o of them.

For example, from the Technology Sector, DEMZ currently includes Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft who all have executives who have contributed overwhelmingly to Democrats pursuant to the publicly available Federal Election Commission data. But DEMZ does not include Oracle and Dell because their executives have contributed significantly more to Republicans than Democrats.

Ulta Beauty and Ralph Lauren are included in DEMZ from the Consumer Discretionary sector; right-leaning companies like Tesla and Home Depot are not.

In the Communication Services sector, Netflix and Electronic Arts are included in the fund; AT&T and Charter Communications are not.

DEMZ is basically a retirement asset for Democrats who want to put their money in the market without investing in Republican-supporting companies.

Or that is what Goods Unite Us and its investment team thought at launch back on Election Day 2020.

On Friday, October 31, 2025, DEMZ celebrated its 5th anniversary.
And DEMZ has not just tracked the market–it has also outperformed it by 7.81% over the last 5 years!
(Compare SPY to DEMZ.)

DEMZ launched at a price of $20.25 per share, and five years later on October 31, 2025, DEMZ closed at a price of $43.19 per share.

That is a 113.38% total return over the 5 years!

While this performance is impressive, it also could be used to argue something else: the data demonstrates that Democrats have been better at running large U.S. companies than Republicans over the last five years.

Does this mean that people should only invest in companies who have Democrats as executives and not look at anything else? Of course not. But the data says what it says. And it is certainly interesting.

Of course, this all begs the question:

Why have the companies with Democrats in the c-suite outperformed?

There are many possible reasons.

Democrats as a class are typically more concerned about employee rights and corporate impacts on society than Republicans. Democrats in leadership positions could therefore be facilitating better work environments than Republicans.

Democrats as a class are also less likely to challenge and try to thwart government regulation than Republicans—which could lead to less government enforcement and/or less negative publicity towards Democrat-run companies.

Although Democrats in company leadership might be ahead in stock performance, ironically the Republicans are leading in the market demand for these types of political-oriented financial products.

The American Conservative Values ETF (ticker: ACVF) launched within a few days of DEMZ, and like DEMZ, it is a large-cap fund designed for investors seeking to align their portfolios with conservative values while maintaining exposure to the broader U.S. equity market.

ACFV has underperformed DEMZ since launch, but ACVF’s current assets under management (AUM) are $138 million.

DEMZ AUM as of its 5 year anniversary was roughly $51 million–or nearly three times less.

Democrats therefore might be better at running America’s largest companies. But so far, they have not been better at putting their investment money where their vote is.