Venturing into Vegan Investing

Why Vegan Investing

The idea to invest in Vegan companies to show my support for the sector stems from two books that I’ve read.

• “Clean Meat” by Paul Shapiro, where he discusses how technology was the demise of past animal exploitation(whaling, horse transport, etc), and that technology will also be the demise of modern animal agriculture.
• The second book is “The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically” by Peter Singer where he discusses using our time, money and choice of work in service of altruistic goals.

Both are exceptional books and I strongly encourage every Vegan to read them.

What I took away from these books, is that in order to promote Veganism I need to invest my time, effort and money into things that will effectively grow it. One such implementation of this idea is Investing in Vegan companies.

One caveat to note is that I’m not Vegan for animals. I became a Vegan to protect planet Earth. As such I will also invest in technology companies that are beneficial for Earth such as those in the solar, space and farming sectors.

How I’m Vegan Investing

Choices for Vegan investing are very limited in South Africa. I would like to invest in Vegan small businesses but the effort seems high and the impact low. Also local Vegan businesses don’t appear to be open to the small investors, and it seems like a hassle to track all of them down and engage with them fully. So I decided to invest in the biggest Vegan companies in the world that I could get access to via online platforms.

I’m using EasyEquities to buy shares because they do list a few Vegan international companies. Here are short list of the international companies that are Vegan:

Company Name	Tickers	Available on EasyEquities
Beyond Meat	(NASDAQ:BYND)	✅
Else Nutrition (OTCMKTS:BABYF)	(OTCMKTS:BABYF)
Tattooed Chef (NASDAQ:TTCF)	(NASDAQ:TTCF)	✅
Maple Leaf Foods (OTCMKTS:MLFNF)	(OTCMKTS:MLFNF)
Burcon NutraScience (OTCMKTS:BUROF)	(OTCMKTS:BUROF)
The Very Good Food Company (OTCMKTS:VRYYF)	(OTCMKTS:VRYYF)
Laird Superfood (NASDAQ:LSF)	(NASDAQ:LSF)
Modern Plant Based Foods (CSE:MEAT)	(CSE:MEAT)
Plant & Co. (CSE:VEGN)	(CSE:VEGN)
Pontus Protein (TSXV:HULK)	(TSXV:HULK)

I started investing on 2023-07-12 and I decided to buy Beyond Meat(BYND), The Tattooed Chef(TTCF), Archer-Daniles-M(ADM) and Tesla(TSLA).

My typical approach to investing is Dollar Cost Averaging where you consistently buy an asset you want every month. Over time the fluctuations in the market smooth out to reveal the typical upward trend of solid assets. This has worked extremely well for me with respect to other assets, so I don’t mind doing the same with shares.

I have one AirBNB investment property left that generates about R7,250 per month. I take that revenue and buy the shares with it very month; 1 share of TSLA, 1 share of ADM and whatever cash that remains I buy as much BYND shares as possible.

Because my Vegan Stock Investments are enabled by another investments proceeds, I won’t be too hassled if my Vegan stocks strategy were to fail.

Tesla

It’s important to note that I increased my TSLA exposure significantly and quickly to 16.5 Shares. I was hoping obtain 17 shares but the fees ate up some of my capital. The reason for the higher acquisition is because I watched the below video which calculates that 17 shares in combination with some other assets will allow you to retire by 2032. This thinking has worked well for me in the past so I have no qualms buying up to R70k worth of Tesla.

I believe in the company and believe they can mitigate climate change. Furthermore this stock could also secure my future retirement. Hence, I’m solving multiple concerns at the same time.

The Tattooed Chef

I was super hyped to buy into TTCF, but quickly I learned that the company was doing poorly with poor management and a misaligned vision. Selling all this stock in favor of BYND was an easy decision.

Beyond Meat

Likewise BYND has been doing poorly, but this I put down to market conditions rather than mismanagement or execution. In this case, my view is that I’m picking up the stock at a discount. This is a long term play, and I’ll Dollar Cost Average for the next decade because the secular trend towards a plant based society is guaranteed. Furthermore, I reckon that BYND can scale globally and undercut meat over the next few years.

ADM

I’m unfamiliar with this company, but I hear that they’re a large player and provide plant inputs to other massive companies. Technically they’re not a plant based, but they products and services revolve around plants so that’s fine with me. As a company that provides primary inputs to other companies I can see why they do well.

Edit : I recently learned that they do have dealings with the dairy industry, so I’ll need to reevaluate the stock over time. They’re prominent in the plant based space, but the dairy exposure is an issue. I’ll keep an eye on this one.

2023 Q3 Transactions

	2023-07	2023-08	2023-09
Fees	$4.89	$43.42	$1.33
TSLA	$272.13 1 share	$3410.74 14.5 shares	$249.51 1 share
ADM	$80.45 1 share	$85.55 1 share	$79.02 1 share
BYND	$37.12 2 share	$47.22 3 shares	$38.37 3 shares
TTCF	$4.72 0 shares	N/A	N/A

Fees included:

• Broker Commission
• Clearing Services &other admin
• SEC Fees
• FINRA Trading Activity Fee
• Value Added Tax on costs (VAT)
• Forex Transfer Fee

2023 Q3 Results

As of 1st October 2023 the investment results are as follows with the ZAR/USD exchange rate at R18.92

Total Invested to Date	R83,807
Current Portfolio Value	R84,232
Total Fees	R931.24 ($49.64 * 18.76)
Total Shares ADM	3
Total Shares BYND	8.6
Total Shares TSLA	16.5 (Retirement ✅)
Portfolio Appreciation	🔼 3.12%

This performance is not bad. It ain’t no Bitcoin, but it’s definitely better than property, especially given that these investments can promote Veganism and protection of the Planet.

The fees are pretty bad however, representing about 1% of my initial capital. There’s always some middleman taking a cut which is frustrating and why Bitcoin is much better in this regard.

The below charts show how my chosen stocks performed over 2023 Quarter 3 and since their initial listing. As you can see the plant based stocks haven’t performed that well but I think it will turn around over time.

TTCF Performance

ADM Performance

BYND Performance

TSLA Performance

The Future

I believe in positive and negative tipping points. We’re living in a time where we will see both tipping points occur with respect to meat. We will see over the next few decades meat consumption drop drastically due disease outbreaks, increased costs of production but most importantly hyper inflation. But at the same time plant based protein will see a massive spike in adoption even though we’re in a bear market now.

These coinciding factors will drive up the price of Vegan and Plant friendly shares in such a way as to propel Veganism and Environmentalism to global mass adoption.

Vegan Investing Opportunities

There are other Vegan Investing opportunites that I’d like to explore soon. Broadly speaking these are:

• Vegan Stokvels – A stokvel is a uniquely South African investing concept which is an informal gathering of savings amongst a group of people, which is handed out to each person, one after the other. However, I would modify it so that the savings are spent on acquiring equity in Vegan businesses.
• Vegan ETFs – Exchange Traded Funds like EATV by Vegtech allows people to buy into an index fund comprised of Vegan companies in the US. This is an option worth exploring. Of particular note, is that buying into EATV could potentially quadrrupal your animal welfare impact.
• Vegan Investing Club – This a concept whereby people can invest directly in a Vegan startup. This one confuses me a little because it appears to be like kickstarter in that you’ll get certain rewards as a contributor but no equity. I need to explore this more.
• Clean Meat Companies – New companies operating the the Clean Meat space are cropping up everywhere including South Africa. One such company is New Form Foods. I’m not sure if we can invest in these types of companies but it would be great if we could.
• Copy Trading – JayNemsis is an interesting example of copy trading. He is a Vegan and trades on Etoro. Using Etoro, you can copy another persons trades if you think they’re good. Unfortunately, it does appear that I can’t send fiat to Etoro and JayNemsis is already fully copied.

Conclusion

I honestly do not believe that Vegans will turn the world Vegan or Plant Based for the matter. In fact I think Vegans will fail in their attempt to protect the animals that they cherish. As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve come to believe that other factors will bring about a Vegan-ish world. That will be inflation, climate change, healthcare concerns, business and most importantly technology.

These domains have the engineers, business people, lawyers and scientists that will drive the change towards a Vegan-ish world. Unfortunately we as Vegans aren’t inclined to these domains, but that’s fine. We can still amplify our Vegan impact by supporting these companies. Not through buying their products, but by investing in them and holding their stock so that their value can never fall below a certain floor price; and in doing so promote and protect these companies.

I’ve done pretty well investing in other assets, so now it’s time to start investing in what I believe in which is protecting the planet and protecting the life on the planet. Hopefully other Vegans will join me.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

References

https://investingnews.com/daily/life-science-investing/top-plant-based-food-stocks/