Who's a better investor, God or Satan?

Here's an amusing article I came across:

The market is amoral and agnostic. It has no interest in your virtues or vices or God, except insofar as they help make money. But just as morality and faith have taken a larger role in all of American life, so are they also playing an increasingly prominent role in investing. For the secularly progressive, there are socially conscious mutual funds. Jews may be partial to Israel bonds. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, which sounds like the setup for a Garrison Keillor one-liner, offers more than 20 mutual funds. Putting money to work in ways compatible with your overall worldview is clearly appealing to growing numbers of investors.

And this has produced a very odd market anomaly: Both virtue and vice seem to be increasingly effective investing strategies. God and Satan are both winning on Wall Street. In recent years, people who have invested in a particular brand of virtue—the Ave Maria Catholic Values Fund—and people who have invested in a particular brand of vice—the Vice Fund—have both handily beaten the market.

Interesting enough. More interesting still, though, are some of the questions that arise:

Now let's answer the two questions I am sure you have been asking yourself. First, do the funds share any holdings? In other words, what vice is also a virtue? The answer, of course, is war. Both the Catholic Values Fund and the Vice Fund own General Dynamics. And Ave Maria's bond fund owns bonds of United Technologies, which is also in the Vice Fund.

Second, in the competition between virtue and vice, who's winning? Alas, as this chart shows, vice has been winning by a small margin over the past few years. In the past year, its margin has been impressive.

I suppose I can see the reason why that both funds invest in arms manufacturers; the Ave Maria fund sees them as virtuous because they help to kill the infidel, while the Vice fund sees them as belonging to their mandate because they help to, well, kill. Which suggests that one vice that the Vice Fund doesn't have is self-deception; they recognize killing people as a vice. Maybe this clear-headedness is part of the reason why they're more successful.

Speaking of vice and investing, since I've quit smoking I've had an extra $25 or so per week to play with. On a whim, I decided that I'm going to spend this money on silver Maple Leaf coins, at least for a while. That way, I'll have a nice tangible reminder of how much money I was wasting, and possibly a valuable asset. After all, regardless of the dodginess of investing in precious metals, it surely can't be any worse than investing in cigarettes (unless you're willing to risk getting busted for smuggling).