My investing journey started in 2009, but I didn't really have a clue what I was doing at that stage, and I was essentially a mug punter taking random bets in between law lectures. We all start somewhere.

I've had this sitting in drafts for a while. I can see that the number of regular readers is declining since I temporarily signed off in the last newsletter, but I hope a few of you will enjoy this excerpt from an email I received a while back. I think it's interesting to hear what actually motivates people to invest ethically.

I won't be posting much research on this website for a while, so it's fitting that I bow out with a public note on 1300 Smiles Limited (ASX: ONT).

The outlook is good for the Hypothetical Ethical Investor - but before we talk about our hypothetical friend, we should probably do the housekeeping.

This post is inspired by Tim Minchin's Occasional Address at the University of Western Australia...

Some time ago I was going to write a blog about micro-cap health stocks. I never ended up publishing because I was trying to accumulate (at slightly lower than market prices) some of the illiquid micro-caps on this list below.

1. Does the business have long-term tailwinds or headwinds?

It wasn't until I went to do another update on the Hypothetical Ethical Portfolio that I noticed that the last update significantly understated my hypothetical returns.

Please note: this report is very old to the point where it is useless. You must not consider it to be current. Many things may have changed, and it may well be that I no longer believe this company to be an attractive option. Please consider it an archive only.

When I came into ethical investing I knew people would have different ethics. But if there was one company I thought thought we could agree on, it was Cochlear Limited (ASX: COH), a company builds hearing aids as well as generating good profits for shareholders.