Politics and money are more tangled than ever. So the New York Times decided to test a simple question: does it actually pay to invest along political lines?
They put DEMZ, the Democrat focused investment fund Goods Unite Us launched in 2020, to the test. And the results speak for themselves.
The Setup
In a July 24 Strategies column, longtime markets columnist Jeff Sommer set out to see whether politically-oriented investing actually works in practice. He pulled two funds built around opposite political theses: the Point Bridge America First ETF (MAGA), which holds S&P 500 companies whose employees and PACs lean heavily Republican, and our own DEMZ — the Democratic Large Cap Core Fund, built to track the S&P 500 using companies that direct the bulk of their political giving to Democratic causes and candidates.
He didn’t stop there. Sommer also benchmarked both funds against Trump Media & Technology Group, Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX, and the S&P 500 itself, measuring performance from President Trump’s second inauguration through the article’s publication.
The Numbers
Here’s what the Times found, measured from Trump’s second inauguration:
- DEMZ: +28.5%
- S&P 500: +27.6%
- MAGA: +15.4%
- Tesla: -11.6%
- Trump Media & Technology Group: -75.8%
DEMZ didn’t just beat MAGA by a wide margin, it beat the broader market too. That’s a remarkable result for a fund built around a values-based screen, and it’s exactly the kind of data point we’ve hoped more of the investing world would notice.
Why This Matters
Sommer’s larger argument is that chasing political proximity to power isn’t a great investment strategy on its own. He’s right about that. But his data also makes a case we’ve been making since Goods Unite Us launched: you don’t have to choose between values-aligned investing and strong returns. DEMZ shows they can go hand in hand.
That’s the whole premise behind what we built. Investors shouldn’t have to guess where their money is going or whether the companies they own align with what they care about. DEMZ gives people a way to invest in the S&P 500’s largest companies while screening out the ones whose political giving runs against their values—without giving up performance to do it.
Getting featured by the Times, in a column read by some of the most sophisticated investors in the country, is a big validation moment for that thesis.
The Bottom Line
Political investing has a reputation for being a feel-good move that costs you returns. The Times’ own numbers say otherwise when it comes to DEMZ. We’ll take that endorsement.
Want to see how DEMZ stacks up for yourself? You can learn more about it here or explore the rest of the Goods Unite Us platform to see where your money, and the companies you support, really stand.