James Fishback launches the Azoria 500 Meritocracy ETF
Announcing a new financial fund from Featured Innovator James Fishback, who is part of the wealth of talent we are bringing together in the Fearless Journeys 2.0 community.
I am happy to announce that James Fishback, Founder & CEO of Azoria Partners, is now a Featured Innovator in the Fearless Journeys 2.0 community.
James was my guest on episode 146 of the Agents of Innovation podcast, first airing in September 2024. You can watch it at the link below.
In addition to founding this financial firm, he is also the founder of the nonprofit organization, Incubate Debate, America’s fastest-growing debate league, which hosts in-person tournaments where middle and high school students from 10 states debate timely and timeless topics to sharpen their speaking, research, and thinking.
***
As mentioned above, James is founder & CEO of Azoria Partners, which is a multi-asset investment firm.
And today — as in actually today — Azoria has publicly listed its “anti-DEI” exchange-traded fund (ETF), the Azoria 500 Meritocracy ETF (ticker: SPXM).
SPXM, available through any U.S. brokerage account, invests in the top 500 U.S. companies except those that impose racial or gender hiring targets (“DEI hiring targets”).
SPXM’s premise is simple: companies that hire and promote on skill and ability will be more successful than those that hire on race and gender.
America was built on meritocracy and should not drift from that based on trendy virtue signals.
James and I are both sons of immigrants (his mother is Colombian, my father is Cuban). We have witnessed first hand the vast amount of opportunities the United States grants everyone who is born and raised here and the millions who have migrated here.
As someone who travels around the world frequently, I come back to the U.S. and recognize there’s a reason we are different — and meritocracy is a large part of what defines American Exceptionalism. It’s why so many leave systems of oligarchy, patronage, authoritarian dictatorships, or even caste systems, to find opportunity here in the land of the free.
American entrepreneurs and business leaders play an important role in keeping American meritocracy alive. And this new Azoria Meritocracy ETF launched by James Fishback’s Azoria Partners is calling their attention to get their companies — and our country — back to these foundational principles.
Last December, James invited me to a breakfast at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. He hosted this private event to announce this new ETF.
What really stood out to me that day, in his announcement, is that given all the attention to DEI that seems like such a trend, only 37 of the top 500 publicly traded companies in the United States actually use DEI in its hiring practices. That means they are a small minority. It also means that 463 of the top 500 companies in the United States do not use DEI in its hiring practices.
Every company is different and attracts different kinds of talent. Imagine if construction companies would be forced to hire women over men? While there are certainly some women who can — and do — execute specific roles in a construction company, the vast majority of qualified talent in that industry are men. It’s also why a major company like Google ended its DEI hiring practices. That doesn’t mean it can’t still be committed to equal opportunity and inclusion.
To impose racial or gender hiring practices (i.e. quotas) on a company would be quite foolish and limit their potential. Every company should strive to hire the very best talent for the job. Period.
The idea behind America and the success of American businesses has always been built on the foundation of meritocracy. Wherever we can encourage and inspire the traditional American idea of meritocracy — where opportunities and success are earned through merit (meaning demonstrable skills, qualifications, and contributions, and not other factors) — we should.
That’s why I applaud James Fishback’s efforts to focus investors on the 463 companies (in the S&P 500) that do this and to exclude the 37 companies that engage in unfair hiring practices. This new fund gives we the people the opportunity to make our voices heard through our investments and to invest in the companies that are taking the right track towards good business.
In a statement provided to Fearless Journeys, the company said that: “Azoria believes every American is capable of greatness. No one—black Americans, women, or anyone else—needs a hiring target to succeed. These targets insult individual achievement, betray merit, and reject the dream that we be judged by the content of our character. They also hurt stock returns by preventing companies from hiring the best, forcing in not-yet-qualified workers, and fueling internal division and strife. If companies return to merit, SPXM will proudly invest in them because merit is morally right and financially smart.”
Until now, investors had no way to exclude DEI losers from their standard S&P 500 ETF. Now they do. It’s called SPXM, and it’s available today to any American with a brokerage account — and is available on any brokerage platform (Robinhood, Etrade, Schwab, Vanguard, etc).
***
If you would like to connect directly with Featured Innovators like James Fishback, I encourage you to apply to join Fearless Journeys 2.0 here. As you can tell, we keep good company!