The Bible: Keeping the Faith (NYSEARCA:BIBL)

There are many investors who prefer a more socially responsible approach to the markets that aligns with their core values ​​and, in some cases, their faith. It’s more than just a performance – it’s a way to express your personal beliefs through it What is with you. And if you’re in this camp, then… Inspiring 100 institutional investors (NYSEARCA:BIBL) might be worth considering. This fund invests in a diversified basket of large-cap U.S. companies deemed consistent with the faith. The goal is to offer investors broad equity exposure aimed at market returns through a selection of ethically collected stocks based on a set of biblically responsible investable investment criteria.

BIBL tracks the Inspire 100, a market-cap-weighted index of 100 of the most Bible-aligned large U.S. companies, and is scanned daily for compliance with Inspire’s Bible-based indexing standards. The fund depends on the Inspire Impact Score®, a proprietary scoring methodology that seeks to measure a company’s positive impact on people, planet and privacy, by assessing how well it typically aligns with biblically-based factors within a social and environmental framework. Areas Influencing Corporate Behavior While not huge at $318 million in assets under management, it has clearly attracted some cornerstone investor interest, with a net expense ratio of 0.35%.

Look at the holding

This is a market cap weighted fund, so when we look at the holdings, we see that the top positions are ordered by size. The nice thing here regardless of the faith-focused methodology is that the top positions are not the ones you see in the more negative market cap weighted benchmarks.

The position size also naturally makes this more balanced, with the top 10 positions making up just over 33% of the portfolio. I see this positively because it is very different from what we see now in the major averages where the top 5 stocks are so far so large compared to other holdings in the market proxies, which in turn creates much more idiosyncratic risk than investors realise.

Sector composition and weights

One thing to note is that this is still heavily exposed to technology at over 30%, but the 10 largest holdings are not as heavy on technology as other market averages, so I think that’s good. I like that Industrials has the second largest weight here at 22%. It’s a good balance overall.

Peer Comparison: Bible vs. Prayer

It is worth comparing BIBL to a faith-based ETF, the Biblically Responsible Risk Management (FIS) ETF (PRAY). This fund also focuses on avoiding companies deemed inconsistent with Christian values, but it does so with some risk management on the companies it selects. When we look at the price ratio between the two, we find that the performance of the two has been largely in line with each other. There’s not much difference overall from a pure performance perspective.

Pros and Cons

On the plus side, BIBL provides an opportunity for your portfolio to be intentionally influenced by biblical values ​​and principles. BIBL is essentially an ESG-rated fund from this perspective, and there is increasing demand for products like this across the board. Moreover, this passively managed fund with an expense ratio of 0.35 percent is inexpensive to gain exposure to the large-cap U.S. equity market.

Negativity? Clearly, biblically responsible investment standards exclude some companies that, although inconsistent with the Christian values ​​underlying the fund’s methodology, can deliver outsized returns and cause poor performance. Furthermore, the scoring methodology may also miss certain aspects of Christian values ​​for investors looking to get a pure opportunity there.

Conclusion: Investing with purpose and principles

I think the Inspire 100 ETF is a good fund for what it does, and even if you’re not focused on the Christian values ​​side of things, the mix of stocks looks good compared to what you’re seeing literally everywhere right now. Although some funds have emerged recently that offer narrowly focused investment opportunities on a religious basis, Inspire was among the first to combine book values ​​with a broad stock market and did so with a low expense ratio. Worth a look in my opinion.

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