We have some good news to share with you! We wanted to make you aware of a recent prospectus supplement that Dimensional Fund Advisors filed for the U.S. Sustainability Core 1 and International Sustainability Core 1 portfolios. The supplement covers modifications to the sustainability portfolios that will be effective February 28, 2016.
Sustainability continues to be a frequent topic of discussion across the investment industry and a topic of great interest for many of our clients. Dimensional’s goal in designing strategies that consider these issues is to provide solutions that attempt to address the tastes and preferences of investors while still providing broadly diversified portfolios that emphasize securities with higher expected returns. As the thinking around sustainability has evolved, and specific practices have been held out as increasingly important to address, we believed this was the right time to recommend these enhancements to the screening process for Dimensional’s sustainability strategies.
Effective February 28, the portfolios will emphasize the primary sustainability impact considerations of high carbon or greenhouse gas emissions, as well as reserves that may produce those emissions. In addition, Dimensional will consider other factors that they believe may be important to investors interested in sustainability, such as land use, cluster munitions manufacturing, biodiversity, involvement in toxic spills or releases, operational waste, water use, tobacco, child labor and factory farming.
These enhancements are in keeping with our goal to recommend well-diversified, value-added solutions that meet the evolving set of our clients’ needs, tastes and preferences. We plan to release more resources on this topic in the coming months so that you can understand the improvements in environmental impact that your Abacus portfolio may be having.
