We look at every company the same way first: as an investment. Is the business growing, what is it worth, how is the price behaving? Everyone gets that read, for every name we cover.
Next to it, we show the ethics. Each company carries a short label from our ethical screen and our boycott check, so you can see both sides at once.
Why we show everything
Markets and ethics are both worth understanding, and people weigh them differently. Some readers want to avoid certain businesses entirely. Some want to know the facts and decide case by case. Some care mostly about the numbers. We don't think it's our place to make that choice for you. So we don't hide companies from our research. We label them, plainly, and the decision stays yours.
What our screen checks
The screen has two parts, and a company passes only if both do:
- What the business does. Companies whose main activity is conventional lending, insurance, gambling, alcohol, tobacco, adult entertainment, weapons or similar don't pass.
- How the balance sheet is built. We test debt, interest-bearing holdings, receivables and interest income against fixed limits. These limits are drawn from widely followed faith-based index standards: debt below 33% of total assets, interest-bearing holdings below 33%, receivables below 49% and interest income below 5% of revenue. Every figure is arithmetic on a company's public accounts, and each company page shows the working.
Separately, our boycott check looks at whether a company appears on the boycott lists we track. It is shown as its own label, not mixed into the screen result. A company can pass the screen and still carry a boycott flag, and the page says so.
Full detail: How our screen works and the boycott tracker. For the bigger picture, see the lesson What is ethical investing?
What each label means
- Passes our ethical screen: the business activity and all the balance-sheet checks came back inside their limits.
- Does not pass our screen: at least one check failed. Where we know which one, the label names it.
- Our screen: potentially compliant, not yet confirmed: the checks we could run passed, but at least one figure is missing.
- Our screen: under review: something in the data looks unusual, so we are checking it before giving a result.
- Our screen: not enough data yet: we can't run the checks yet.
- Not yet on our ethical screen: we haven't screened this company yet.
- Flagged by our boycott check: the company appears on a boycott list we track. Its page says which list and why.
- Conscience flag (company pages): a community boycott list cites this company. We record it beside the screen result, not inside it.
- Holds companies on our boycott watch list (funds): the fund owns at least one company our boycott check flags.
Where we do filter, and why
A few things are filtered, because people ask us to choose for them:
- Our curated ethical stock list (the stocks that pass our screen and clear the boycott check) shows only those companies.
- Our curated ethical fund list (funds screened to faith-based index standards) shows only those funds. Funds holding flagged companies carry the boycott watch label.
- Our own trading book only holds names that pass both.
Everything else is labelled, not filtered:
- Movers of the Week, where a toggle lets you show only stocks that pass our ethical screen;
- every company page;
- daily reads;
- the ideas we share.
The honest limits
A pass is not a recommendation, and a fail is not a judgement on anyone who owns the stock. Screens rely on published figures that change, so every result shows its date and updates when the numbers move. Our screen and boycott check are a starting point. Your own ethical judgement comes first.
Education, not advice.