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“Index Funds: The 12-step Recovery Program for Active Investors,” a documentary released several years ago by Mark Hebner, owner of Irvine-based Index Fund Advisors Inc., counts about 600,000 views on YouTube.
One of those viewers was famed filmmaker Errol Morris, the Oscar-winning director of “The Fog of War” and other documentaries, whose newest release is “Tune Out the Noise.”
Morris’ new film, about stock indexing, was financed by billionaire finance exec David Booth, co-founder of Austin, Texas-based Dimensional Fund Advisors, which counted nearly $700 billion in assets under management as of last year. The movie, released earlier this year, has received plenty of national attention, with recent features in both the Wall Street Journal and The Economist.
Hebner was told that his movie (and book of the same name, which first came out in 2007) were the inspiration for Morris’ documentary, where he appears for about two minutes. Hebner interviewed Booth for his own movie and hosted Tune Out the Noise’s local premiere in Newport Beach.
“There are 50,000 advisers that they could have put in (Morris’) film and there are only two of us who were not from Dimensional,” said Hebner, whose firm has grown to $5.4 billion in assets under management.
“It was exciting to watch myself on the silver screen.”
Morris’ 88-minute documentary, which the WSJ calls a “nerdy and genuinely engrossing documentary about investment strategy,” was, like Hebner’s movie, made available for free on YouTube. It counts almost 4 million views to date.
Sequoia Climate Foundation, an Irvine-based grant maker set up about 5 years ago by Fred Taylor, the multi-billionaire co-founder of locally based quant hedge fund TGS, has quickly built up a name among environmentally-focused nonprofits.
A report earlier this year in Inside Philanthropy sifted through Sequoia’s 2023 tax filings and found that it had moved $257 million for that year, making it one of the world’s biggest players in philanthropy geared towards combatting climate change and promoting clean energy.
The report also detailed where and how the group’s money was being directed.
Sequoia’s strategy, per Inside Philanthropy: “multimillion-dollar awards primarily to climate intermediaries, largely drawn from the ClimateWorks Foundation network, and several so-called Big Greens, with most grants landing at domestic groups.”
Notable grantees included “Sequoia’s long-time favorite, the European Climate Foundation,” as well as Tara Climate and World Resources Institute, the report said.
Sequoia’s website said it has, as of last year, given $926 million via over 330 grants.
Bond King Bill Gross isn’t a fan of the recent market turmoil, noting via social media that recent steep losses “will affect millennial and Gen Z investors for long to come. What before was a can’t-miss way to make money will induce caution and more conservative attitudes,” resulting in higher yields and “low single-digit returns.”
Asked Gross on April 9: “Would you want to own highly volatile U.S. stocks whose price depends on whether POTUS had a good night’s sleep and woke up the next morning to reverse yesterday’s policies?”