The 2ndVote Advisers Shareholders First Index (SHFI) includes large and mid-cap US traded companies that are screened to determine if they prioritize their duties to shareholders over political activism or social policy agendas, as evaluated by proprietary research from our affiliate, 2ndVote, Inc. (2ndVote Analytics). Companies are screened based on their neutral rating on each of six social/political issue categories. A company must score neutral on each issue 2ndVote Analytics’ scores which currently includes: Life, Basic Freedoms, 2nd Amendment, Civil Safe Society, Education, and the Environment. The methodology employed by the SHFI then weights the remaining companies by utilizing a unique quantitative factor model, licensed from a third party, designed to rank companies that have financial characteristics that are expected to outperform the market in the then-current monetary regime. The resulting SHFI is replicable, investable, rules-based, and transparent. We believe that effectively managing risk is a natural outgrowth of the dynamic methodology employed by the SHFI, whose approach of re-evaluating stocks across various monetary regimes produces dynamic index exposures that are not stuck in static sectors, factors, styles, or strategy bets that move in and out of favor.
The index methodology employed by the SHFI is not political in nature and includes the stocks that our models indicate should produce superior performance and prioritize their duties to shareholders over political activism or social policy agendas. 100% of SHFI’s constituent companies score neutral on 2ndVote Analytics’ six social/political issue categories. Rebalancing is based on changes to the universe of SHFI’s eligible securities and the financial metrics employed by the factor model. Changes to the index may take up to 60 days to implement.