Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Head of Corporate Governance for Strive Asset Management Justin Danhof to the newsmaker line to describe the company’s goals and portfolio, and closing the back doors of corporate America.
Leahy: We welcome to our newsmaker line Justin Dahof, the head of corporate governance for Strive Asset Management. Good morning, Justin. How are you this morning?
Danhof: I’m doing great, Michael. It’s a pleasure to talk with you.
Leahy: Strive Asset Management is an exchange-traded fund, and your objective is to have a portfolio of companies where you are able to communicate to them your desire that they not follow woke policies. Do I have that right?
Danhof: So Strive Asset Management, we’re a brand-new asset management firm. We do have one ETF, and we are launching more products coming up in the following month. And our first product is DRLL, and it’s a U.S. energy product. And our message is quite simple.
On behalf of our clients, we’re telling American energy companies to do something very novel in today’s society, and that is to be a U.S. energy company.
Simon: That’s very good. This is Roger Simon here, but are the energy companies listening? They’re pretty big operations.
Danhof: Yes. I think that you’re going to find in short order that, look, if you go to work for Twitter, you might have one very strong opinion on shutting down speech of people that you don’t believe in. But if you go to work for ConocoPhillips, if you go to work for Exxon or Chevron or Valero, I think you’re going to find that most of these individuals, actually want to produce energy.
They want to be a great oil and gas company, because guess what? There is opportunity there for so long under whether it’s ESG mandates such as Scope 3, whether it’s fear of the political class and the regulatory class, they have been shackled, and very often they’ve been shackled by their own shareholders.
Leahy: So let’s talk about, when you say ESG mandate – tell everybody what ESG stands for, who’s been pushing it, and what is Scope 3?
Danhof: Sure. So ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Corporate governance. Those are just words. They actually mean nothing in this context. What ESG actually is is whatever an activist, generally a liberal interest group, can’t achieve through the front door, through legislation or through the courts, they try and sneak in the back door through corporate America.
And so what do I mean by that? Well, where is the Green New Deal in Congress? Where is Congress ratifying the Paris climate accord? Nowhere. So Congress, even fully controlled by one party, can’t achieve the Green New Deal.
They can’t ratify the Paris climate accord. So what do they do? They go to the back door of the corporate ballot. So not the electoral ballot for politicians, but the corporate ballot. And they vote for corporate board members and corporate shareholder resolutions that try to achieve the same result.
Leahy: Now, you just raised, what, $60 million for this DRLL exchange-traded fund, right. I think that’s how much you’ve raised for that, right?
Danhof: Assets under management, we’re already over 200 million, as a matter of fact.
Leahy: Oh, man. That’s what you call fast growth.
Danhof: Yes. And what we’re excited about, is that the investments that were coming in, the flows that are coming into our product, we know it’s from everyday Americans, because the average investment is small.
And so we think that this is really a groundswell of Americans who said, look, the investments in America have become way too politicized, and the everyday American no longer has a voice in corporate America. And those are our two mandates.
Simon: That’s very good. I’m 100 percent for you guys, but let me ask you a question as a prospective investor. How have you been doing? How’s the fund doing?
Danhof: Great. Yeah.
Simon: I know you got $200 million. Has the arrow been going up?
Danhof: Yes. I’d encourage everyone just to take a look for themselves, and talk to your investment advisors before you invest. But that sage advice is for everybody, investing in any product.
Sure. But, yeah, I’d encourage folks come to Strive. Strivefunds.com, take a look, talk to your investment advisor, and I think … we’re very happy.
Leahy: So strive has $200 million under management right now. Congratulations from a launch in April to now, that’s pretty good performance. However, the leader in this backdoor efforts to make all Fortune 500 companies woke and ruin our energy sector is a company called BlackRock.
BlackRock is run by – I suppose you could call the leading villain in this wokeism for corporate America –Larry Fink, the aptly named Larry Fink.
Simon: I thought it was Xi Jingping. (Laughter)
Leahy: I think their ideologies are closely related these days. BlackRock is sort of the leading hedge fund manager out there. How much do they have under management?
Danhof: Oh, I mean $10 trillion. It’s epic. And let me correct you. Strive as a company, started towards the end of April. Our product’s only been out there for about two weeks.
Leahy: That’s pretty darn good.
Danhof: And so I’d say that, look, we’re very clear-eyed about what we’re trying to take on. We understand the scope of BlackRock.
But let me just say, $200 million in two weeks, I think that shows the U.S. Energy sector, because that’s our only product we have available right now, that this is where the puck is going. BlackRock may have this mandate and they may be massive and they may be your largest shareholder in many instances …
Simon: This is a very good bet on a Trump administration in 2024. If that comes to be, your ETF is going to skyrocket.
Danhof: Look, I think that Left, center, and Right, there is an appetite for businesses to stop being so political.
Simon: I wouldn’t go along with Left on that.
Leahy: Well, people who want to make money, people who just want to make money, they want to be sort of not political …
Simon: But also people who want to be good for our country.
Leahy: That’s a very good point. You’re based in Columbus, Ohio. The founder, Vivek Ramaswamy. I love saying that name – Vivek Ramaswamy.
Simon: I’ve only read it.
Leahy: The kid grew up in Cleveland. In Cincinnati. Went to Harvard, I think, and a couple of other places.
Simon: Like you.
Leahy: Yes, this guy that got in the right business, made a whole ton of money, I think, in biotech companies. And now he wrote a book about how Fortune 500 companies are going.
He’s in Cincinnati, I guess. Are you in Columbus? Where are you based, and what’s the day-to-day operation of the company like?
Listen to the interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Justin Danhof” by National Center for Public Policy Research.Â
