The Brewers won the World Series. We’re a Milwaukee firm, so you’ll forgive us for enjoying this one. There’s an investing point here, too. The Brewers ranked 19th out of 30 teams in payroll, at about $146 million. They spent less than most of the league and won anyway.1 They built around speed and putting…
By Cindy Bohlen, CFA, Director of Responsible Investing and Chief Mindfulness Officer We often get asked, as responsible investors, what Riverwater’s position is regarding artificial intelligence. Is it good or bad for people and the planet? Should a responsible portfolio own it, or avoid it? The short answer is that we do not have an…
Small-Cap Macro Commentary | Q3 2026 — Adam Peck, Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer Ten Years of Responsible Small-Cap Investing This past spring marked a decade since Riverwater opened its doors, and we were delighted to celebrate the milestone with our valued clients and friends a few weeks ago. We have a lot to be…
What Survives: Ten Years of the Sustainable Value Strategy In the second quarter of 2000, the eVestment database held 1,234 institutional U.S. equity products. By the first quarter of 2025, only a third of them were still reporting returns. Small-cap value had the best survival rate of any style, at 50%.1 Those figures come from…
Laying the Tracks Capital, Infrastructure, and the Small Cap Opportunity Inside the AI Buildout On May 10th 1869, the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad reached Promontory Summit, UT, completing the first transcontinental railroad at a cost of roughly $109 million, more than $2.6 billion today.1 Yet within three years, the railroad’s own…
What B Corp’s Champion’s Retreat Water Panel Taught Us About Footprint and Handprint The B Corp 2026 Champions Retreat, which convened for the first time in Milwaukee along the shores of Lake Michigan, offered the perfect opportunity to explore how individuals and businesses, working in partnership with investors and policymakers, can turn small ripples of…
Q1 2026 Small Cap Macro Update: The Fog of Excursion Thirty Smelters to Four In 1980, the United States operated roughly thirty primary aluminum smelters. Today there are four. The country that once produced nearly a third of the world’s aluminum now accounts for less than two percent of global output. Production peaked at 4.6…
Measuring Positive Impact in Responsible Investing Riverwater Partners’ Responsible Investing process creates value through its curation of small-cap equity portfolios of companies that have demonstrated superior returns on their responsibly deployed physical, human, and financial capital. Our Due Diligence process seeks to understand both: how a given company’s operations impact people and the planet –…
Why Quality Underperformed in 2025 (And Why We Think History Suggests a Reversal) It was a tough year for active managers who invest in quality companies. Not just for us at Riverwater, but across the board. According to Furey Research Partners, growth, core, and value managers all underperformed in 2025. Among core managers, only 16%…
Sustainability Disclosure in Small Caps: Another Dimension Where the Work Matters In late 2024, we published our first comprehensive analysis of sustainability reporting across the Russell 2000, finding that roughly half of small-cap companies disclosed Environmental, Social and Governance data—a striking gap compared to the near-universal reporting among S&P 500 constituents. We’ve now updated that research,…