This kind of “divestment” is doing literally nothing to fight climate change. You’re just offering stocks in fossil companies at bargain prices, making them more attractive to hold by increasing ROI. Nothing changes in real economy, everything operates as usual.
> Nothing changes in real economy, everything operates as usual.
FWIW,
"As time went on, though, it became clear that divestment was also squeezing the industry. Peabody, the world’s biggest coal company, announced plans for bankruptcy in 2016; on the list of reasons for its problems, it counted the divestment movement, which was making it hard to raise capital. Indeed, just a few weeks ago analysts at that radical collective Goldman Sachs said the “divestment movement has been a key driver of the coal sector’s 60% de-rating over the past five years”."
If you're buying stocks (outside of an IPO), you're not actually providing capital to a company though? You're just buying the shares from someone else & somewhere back in the chain of ownership, someone provided capital to the company.
You're paying off the early investors who funded that company, making similar investments more attractive.
Plus many companies do raise money by issuing new stock after IPO, or buy other companies with their own shares, and so a higher stock price benefits them, even if you don't buy those particular shares.
I'm not selling them at a loss, if I can't get what I paid for them it means they are by definition worth less. Because I do not want them anymore it mean that that market has one less buyer so demand decreases by at least one. If hundred investors came to the same value judgement, the demand decreases by 100. What you are saying is that supply and demand does not matter in a market and I suspect it does.
> I'm not selling them at a loss, if I can't get what I paid for them it means they are by definition worth less.
You have taken a loss. No one who holds the stock is taking a loss. That's why gains and losses can be "realized" and "unrealized."
> Because I do not want them anymore it mean that that market has one less buyer so demand decreases by at least one.
The demand curve shifts to the left, and since stock buyers and sellers are the same people, the supply curve shifts to the right, and, yes, the equilibrium price drops. (edit: Come to thnk of it, the supply curve doesn't change, since it only reflects shareholders and you're dropping out by design. Still, the price goes down.)
But... the company still has all the same employees, still has the same hard assets (real estate, machinery, etc) and is still earning money. The company's fundamentals remain unchanged by a boycott of its stock.
The dividends they pay out per share remain the same, since those are dictated by profits and those haven't changed.
Their investors' assets are worth slightly less, but those investors are the ones who bought your shares, so they actually get more dividends paid out to them.
You've thus managed to reward the people who held on to their stock by making it cheaper for them to acquire more shares.
