Porn Investment

Francis Koenig, 31, previously an executive at a Wall Street hedge fund (New World Partners) but now based in Los Angeles. Last year he launched an Adult Entertainment based investment vehicle called AdultVest (www.adultvest.com) which is raising funds to invest in the $12 billion a year porn industry.

He is looking to launch 2 funds. The first is a $100 million fund which requires a minimum investment of $1 million so no more than 100 investors in this one. The second is a bit more accessible to the average John with a minimum investment of $100,000 to create a $10 million fund.

Investors are signing up on his web site (www.adultvest.com) at a rate of 15 per day and approximately 300 companies have registered with him.

Is there space in your portfolio for porn? Or does porn stock skirt around the edges of non-ethical investments like tobacco?

Thank you Day Trading,

Your last response helps identify problems that the construction of the original topic has caused, in the manner the original poster framed it.

While all of what you've commented on last makes sense, I'm struggled to relate it back to the original topic, where I've been trying to stay with the topic, but notably that it has been tough to do so.

Going by cold logic...

It seems to me that the original poster deems that tobacco is un-ethical and ethics is far closer to the side of the coin that George and Elite and others have worked from. Technically, tobacco is not "un-ethical" when it comes down to it, based on legal standards that traders are subject to, so the question is still apples/oranges.

The side of the coin I've been responding to, was addressing George's original reference to Christians, which invites placing the light more upon the "morals" side of examination, rather than ethics. I hold a distinction between morals and ethics, where morals tend to be more about conscience and ethics a "derived or popular" resolution, (as we do in law and other professions), based upon our morals.

So, perhaps we have a distinction first between morals & ethics and secondly does that invite overtures from two distinct points of view, secular & theological and lastly do these apply to trading and investment as a "profession" and specifically in pornography?

The poster questioned the "ethical" side of investing in pornography and wanted to know if investing in Porn "Skirted around", avoided, ducked out of ethics and therefore was permissible ethically speaking. Since tobacco is given as "legal", (but perhaps unethical in the poster's view), then a distinction can be drawn between legality and ethics/morals, where the poster has already deemed tobacco as un-ethical, (even though it's legal), just as pornography in some realms is legal, so his/her impetus was on the morals/ethics question from a professional view, not one of legality.

The free dictionary online, [url]http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ethics[/url], defines ethics as follows...

quote:

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1.
a. A set of principles of right conduct.
b. A theory or a system of moral values: "An ethic of service is at war with a craving for gain" Gregg Easterbrook.
2. ethics (used with a sing. verb) The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy.
3. ethics (used with a sing. or pl. verb) The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession: medical ethics.

---

Likely, the poster's view was more closely attuned to 3. above, seeking to give credit to traders being professionals or working within trading as a profession in the light of whether we have a moral/ethical standard to maintain as traders.

I guess I'd view the poster's second part of the question as, if we put money into a porn stock, are we aiding and propelling it's growth, professionally speaking and I'd say yes we are "aiding" it's growth but that there is no professional standard or ethical limitation in trading to deem it unethical, professionally speaking.

Trading does not possess an ethical or moral standard, except as it's governing bodies assert upon it. The only thing which even deems trading as a "profession" is the licensing requirements given of brokers and agents to "practice" within the legal framery, so for most of us, trading is more a "vocation" than a profession and even if you're a licensed CTA or broker there is no moral/ethical standard you are under, regarding pornography, that I am aware of.

This later observation brings us back to other's positions that given the above, it becomes each person's choice as to whether or not they are willing / desiring to invest in pornography as their choice will be guided by a personal view on the moral/ethical weights, absent any greater peer review standard, which trading does not possess today, so we lose context if we try to answer the question in that light.

If we accurately break the second part of the poster's question into personal views, I think we would find there are two sets of distinctions between secular viewpoints and theological viewpoints having different standards of personal guidance where theological views do have a more rigid standard given them already and the secular body truly does not, yet the secular body clearly has a conscience as well.

I'd like to see that part debated as two separate topics, from that of the specific nature of the poster's "professional" concern about pornography as it relates to trading. Actually, it would be nice to see a popular consensus of guidance of voluntary, popular ethical and moral standards to guide traders perhaps emerge out of such an effort.

No, I don't invest in the pornography industry, intentionally.

There are however, no ethical or moral standards given of trading per se, regarding pornography and therefore there is no issue of "Skirting" or avoiding any ethics or morals, so long as the investment is legal, as is tobacco also legal.

Even more technically framed, while I tend to hold a personal bias against supporting pornography in trading... as a futures, index, day speculator, I'm already indirectly supporting a certain element of pornography which exists within the index by route of publishers and other publicly traded instruments underlying the index.

My brother reminds me that Bill Cosby once said "If I put a bullet in the furnace, it reflects on my parents.", so maybe we can blame our parents for our wayward ways. LOL

Mike,

Thank you for all of your insightful comments. You are obviously very well educated and your eloquent writing shows such.

Your points are very well made and I don't have anything to add right now so I'm going to let it slow burn in my subconscious and perhaps pick this up a little bit later.

I have been thinking about this more over the past week and I think that maybe porn investment is not such an ethical thing. I have not invested in this directly but if I am given the opportunity then I do not think that I will.

urbansound makes a good point that you unwittingly invest in this type of industry if you want to or not just because you trade in a derivative market, fund or index that invests in this industry.

If you buy the S&P500 through an index tracking fund then I think by definition you are investing in ever industry in the world. I can't imagine anything being left out by the top 500 and their subsidiaries.