[hughpeters]

BlackRock is dumping coal because coal is a dying business. The climate change point is just a convenient PR booster. If coal was still generating lots of free cash flow we wouldn't see this.

With that being said, it's nice to see that the coal industry is losing its economic strength. Hopefully other environmentally unfriendly industries follow suit soon.

[omani]

the only comment that makes sense.

the whole comment section shows how much HN knows about markets and economics. pretty much nothing.

a company wants to dump its position and people think they do it because of the environment.

much hopium.

[UserIsUnused]

But you see, it's because of the environment that that it's not as economical viable.

Green sources are becoming more and more cost effective because of lots of tax money went into them because people care about the environment.

Eventually there shall be plenty of more green alternatives that are more economically interesting than coal, but they only reached that place in refinement because environmental focused measures took place.

[evolve2k]

I think you’re both way off base on this one. Index funds by their nature pretty much replicate the index, it’s a mathematical play generally with no position on dumping or actively positioning on any stocks.

This was always the climate problem, neutral is not ex-climate stocks.. neutral was maths, just matching the index.

Pure indexing was not taking a climate position.

This is why this is so huge, they’ve reset neutral and are challenging others to do the same.

If they gain net inflows into their updated index products this will move fast.

[perl4ever]

It would be stunning if they were changing all their indexes to exclude coal or something.

They're just creating some new/modified indexes as far as I know. There are already more ETFs than individual stocks, I remember reading somewhere.