Green Investors Were Crushed. Now It’s Time to Make Money.
The lessons have been hard, and are a reminder of the basic facts of investing
4 min
Invest according to your political views, and you’re unlikely to make money. Companies that appeal to left-wingers or to right-wingers might be good or bad investments, but the fact of being, on current politics, clean and union-friendly for the left or oily and gun-friendly for the right is neither here nor there. What matters is their ability to make money and how highly they are valued.
This has been rammed home for environmentally-minded investors in the past year, as a coordinated selloff in anything with green credentials crushed the idea of making money while doing good.
It turns out that the real world is tougher than advocates of ESG—environmental, social and governance—investing claimed. The lessons have been hard, but should remind investors in the sector of some of the basic facts of investing. The fall in prices has improved the outlook for the stocks.
This year has been almost universally bad for clean investments. The two worst performers still in the S&P 500 are solar companies Enphase Energy and SolarEdge Technologies, down 60% and 70%, respectively. Hydrogen stocks have fallen sharply, led by Plug Power, which warned it might not survive. Wind-farm developers have been doing so badly they have pulled out of some contracts, with Denmark’s Ørsted off 48% in dollar terms and Florida-based NextEra Energy off 29%.
Electric cars have disappointed too, hitting startups and suppliers and pushing the price of lithium ores, used to produce the battery metal, down by three-quarters or more, although market-leader Tesla’s stock has been an exception.
Just as there was a coordinated green selloff, there has been a coordinated partial rebound in the past month or so.
This provides the first lesson: debt. The clean-energy sector is dependent on vast amounts of borrowing, so high interest rates really hurt. Roman Boner, who runs a clean-energy fund at Dutch fund manager Robeco, points out that major projects are typically financed with 80% debt, so rises in financing costs have a big impact on competitiveness.
Investors who bought into green stocks probably didn’t think they were making a leveraged bet on Treasurys, but that is what they ended up with. It isn’t only about corporate financing costs, either. High borrowing costs hit consumer demand for rooftop solar and for electric cars, both of which are often leased, since leasing costs depend on the cost of debt.
At a very high level, this is about long-term thinking. Low rates encourage investors to think long term, because they make future profits almost as valuable as current profits, and encourage borrowing to try to secure those future profits.
High rates encourage short-term thinking, by making profits today far more valuable than future profits—why bet on the future when you can earn 5% from Treasury bills? Short-term we get fossil-fuel profits, while long-term we get either clean energy or global warming; recently investors have been encouraged by rising rates to think short term.
The second lesson: government. Ronald Reagan overstated it when he said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” But investors who rely on state subsidies to ensure profits leave themselves at the mercy of both fickle politicians and the bureaucrats Reagan was concerned about. This year’s selloff has been worsened by the bureaucrats and their failure to provide the details of many of the subsidies promised in last year’s badly named Inflation Reduction Act.
“We’re still hoping to get them by year end,” says Ed Lees, co-head of the environmental strategies group at BNP Paribas Asset Management. The next problem might be the politicians, at least if Donald Trump wins the presidency and torches the IRA. Lees thinks this will be hard, because so many IRA-subsidised projects are heading for Republican states. But Trump certainly has no sympathy for environmental causes.
The third lesson is the one most relevant to buying today: valuation. Buying stocks when they are trendy and wildly overpriced is a recipe for disaster. Perhaps the most extreme example of late is the L&G Hydrogen Economy ETF, launched in London at the height of clean-energy excitement in February 2021. It plummeted from day one, never regained its launch price, and is down 55% since then.
“We’ve seen a very harsh reality check,” said Sonja Laud, chief investment officer of L&G Investment Management.
The question is whether the hype has left. Laud worries that one year of high rates won’t have crushed all the excesses built up in 12 years of near-zero rates. But clearly valuations are much lower than they were, and she is hopeful there are opportunities to be found now.
“The huge green premium you had previously is no longer there,” says Velislava Dimitrova, who runs sustainable funds at Fidelity International. Clean-energy stocks are “much more interesting than they used to be—I don’t believe that renewables are dead.”
In the bond market, investors are no longer paying much if any “greenium,” or extra price for green bonds. In stocks, it is harder to judge: The S&P Global Clean Energy index trades at a discount to the global market on some measures, but not others, making it difficult to conclude that the sector as a whole is a wonderful bargain.
Still, it is good news for buyers that the hype has evaporated. Investors who care about profits more than purpose can finally consider clean-energy stocks again.
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The voices reshaping how Australians think about money — and why credibility matters more than reach.
6 min
The best financial advice many Australians are receiving right now is not coming from licensed advisers charging by the hour. It is coming through a phone screen, in the ten minutes between work and dinner, from creators who have built credibility the hard way: by being right, being transparent, and being specific in a space where vagueness has always been the easy default.
This is not a ranking by follower count. Follower count is a measure of distribution, not of quality. What follows is a ranking by substance — credentials, accuracy, community depth, and the quality of what an audience actually learns from following these accounts. The distinction matters, because the Australians acting on this content are making real financial decisions with real money.
1- Queenie Tan – Corporate Authorised Representative; Co-Founder & Director, Invest With Queenie & Billroo
There are finance influencers who talk about building wealth, and there are those who document it in real time with receipts. Queenie Tan belongs firmly in the second category. Starting from a $400-per-week income, Tan built her net worth past $1 million while publishing the actual numbers — income, savings rate, investment decisions — for an audience of more than 400,000 across platforms.
She is a Corporate Authorised Representative, co-founder of the personal finance app Billroo, and the author of a book that has become a practical reference for young Australians navigating ETFs, superannuation and property. What separates her from the crowded field of money educators is precision: she does not talk in principles when she can talk in percentages.
2- Alan Kohler – Editor-in-Chief, Eureka Report; Editor-in-Chief, InvestSMART Group; ABC News finance presenter, host of Inside Business.
If Queenie Tan represents the new wave of personal finance creators, Alan Kohler represents something the new wave will spend decades trying to build: institutional credibility that has survived multiple economic cycles. As Editor-in-Chief of the Eureka Report and InvestSMART Group, and a decades-long presence on ABC News, Kohler has spent more than thirty years making financial analysis accessible without dumbing it down.
His coverage of RBA decisions, market movements and economic policy is cited by podcasters, journalists and fund managers alike. He is not chasing virality. He does not need to.
3- Aleks Nikolic – Corporate lawyer; host, Big Swinging Stocks podcast
Most finance creators address the mechanics of money. Aleks Nikolic addresses the psychology — and that distinction explains why her following is as loyal as it is. Operating as Broke Girl Wealth across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Nikolic covers ETFs, crypto and investment strategy, but her real differentiator is a willingness to discuss the emotional architecture of financial decision-making.
Shame around debt. Fear around market volatility. The limiting beliefs that stop people acting on what they already know. In a space where confidence is routinely performed, her candour is a genuine competitive advantage.
4- Bryce Leske & Alec Renehan – Equity Mates Media
Equity Mates did not build a following. They built a media company. What began as a podcast by two friends learning to invest has grown into Australia’s most established investing media brand, covering ASX stocks, ETFs, global markets and fund manager interviews across podcast, social and YouTube.
The longevity is the credential. Equity Mates has operated through multiple market cycles, a global pandemic, and a generational shift in how Australians engage with investing — and its audience has grown through all of it. When the hosts speak, their listeners know they have been paying attention for years.
5- The Lazy CEO – CEO & Founder, Showpo; Shark Tank Australia investor
The metric that matters most on social media is not followers — it is engagement, because engagement signals trust. Jane Lu, known as The Lazy CEO, maintains an engagement rate of approximately 1.15 per cent on Instagram, which is exceptional for a finance account of his size. Her 242,000-plus followers are not passive consumers: they ask questions, share experiences and apply what they read.
Her content focuses on business finance and wealth building, and the active comment sections are the clearest possible evidence that her audience does not merely scroll past.
6- Tash Invests – Founder, Tash Lends; Forbes Australia 30 Under 30
Tash Invests built her following on a premise that sounds simple but is rarer in practice than it should be: she publishes the actual numbers. Not approximations or ranges or anonymised case studies — her salary, her savings rate, her portfolio value, her net worth, updated and on the record.
Having bought her first property at twenty-two and grown her documented net worth past $1 million, she has become the primary reference point for young Australians trying to understand what building wealth on a moderate income genuinely looks like. The specificity is the product.
7- David Scutt – APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group
The authority of most finance social media content rests on research and reading. David Scutt‘s authority rests on having done the job. A former Treasury Dealer at Arab Bank and the Commonwealth Bank, former ASX Business Supervisor, and former Global Markets Editor at Business Insider Australia and anchor at ausbiz TV, Scutt now brings that direct market experience to his role as APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group, rather than relying on secondary commentary.
When he discusses foreign exchange movements or ASX dynamics, it is not because he has read about them. It is because he has traded them.
8- Meddy Demars – Investing & crypto content creator
The gap Meddy Demars fills is specific and underserviced: connecting global macroeconomic events to the practical reality of Australian investors. When the US Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates, when inflation data moves, when commodity prices shift — most Australian finance content either ignores the local implications or translates them poorly.
Demars, operating across TikTok and Instagram from Sydney, does the translation well: explaining what global conditions mean for Australian stocks, savings rates and investment portfolios in terms that are accessible without being condescending.
9- Simran Kaur – Founder, Friends That Invest
Friends That Invest is arguably the most successful community-building exercise in Australian personal finance, and Simran Kaur is the reason why. The New Zealand-based creator — whose audience is predominantly Australian — built a podcast, a book and a social media presence around a single insight: that the personal finance world was not speaking to young women, and that the consequences of that gap were significant.
The measurable cultural shift that followed — women engaging with investing concepts in communities that had not previously existed — is the kind of impact that most financial literacy programmes aim for and rarely achieve.
10- Effie Zahos – Money Editor at 9News
Effie Zahos is one of Australia’s most recognised financial commentators, appearing regularly across 9News, A Current Affair, Today and Today Extra as 9News Money Editor. Her role puts everyday money questions, from mortgage rates to cost-of-living pressures, in front of a national broadcast audience.
Before television, she spent years as editor of Money magazine, building the editorial foundation for her current commentary. She is also Director and Money Commentator at InvestSMART, an ambassador for Canstar, and a published author, with her financial advice available in print as well as on screen.
That combination, decades of editorial experience, an active broadcast presence, and a body of published work, is what makes her commentary carry weight beyond any single platform or post.
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