If you believe that companies that are strongly committed to socially and environmentally sound practices will outperform their peers in the long run, then you would expect so-called socially responsible investment (SRI) funds to deliver superior returns to investors. The trouble is, they don’t. Sure, some years the mutual funds run by the Calvert, Domini, Parnassus and the rest do very well—they excelled during the tech boom of the late 1990s because they tend to eschew heavy industry—but other years, they lag market indexes. Over time, most track the broader market. More…

Source: Marc Gunther