30 BARRON’S March1,2021
FUND PROFILE
Talking With Murray Rosenblithand David Schoenwald
Co-Managers, New Alternatives Fund
Breaking
The Mold
Pays Off
D
avid Schoenwald and
Murray Rosenblith don’t
fit neatly into the mold of
the typical buttoned-up
money manager. For
starters, Schoenwald, 71,
boasts a thick, salt-and-
pepper beard and hair that falls below
his ears. Standing in front of his ex-
pansive yet rustic Long Island home,
he dresses in an open-collar plaid
shirt and baggy bluejeans—evoking
the spirit of Woodstock more than
Wall Street.
He and Rosenblith, 69, have the
history to go with the look. “I be-
longed to Greenpeace for a while,”
says Schoenwald. “I was too far left
for them,” jokes Rosenblith.
So it is fitting that the pair co-man-
age a fund that also doesn’t fit the
mold: $449 millionNew Alterna-
tives(ticker: NALFX), which invests
mainly in alternative-energy stocks.
Morningstar categorizes it as a World
Small/Mid Stock fund, but that
merely describes where its holdings
currently fit in standard style boxes—
and fails to capture its unique strat-
egy. Because New Alternatives is con-
centrated in just one sector, its
Morningstar group record isn’t a per-
fect gauge of performance.
Be that as it may, few mutual fund
managers have as much experience
investing in alternative-energy stocks
as Schoenwald, who has been work-
ing on this fund since he launched it
with his father, Maurice Schoenwald,
in 1982. Rosenblith joined the fund’s
board in 2003 and became co-man-
ager in 2008. With the rise of socially
responsible investing—and now that
climate change has become a force
that Wall Street must reckon with—
their sector has finally caught fire.
So the fund shines when compared
with its so-called category peers. New
Alternatives’ 23% five-year annualized
return bests 88% of the category, in
part thanks to two very strong years—
it was up 37% in 2019 and 69% in
- It has a 3.5% load, but a below-
average 1.08% expense ratio. (There is
also a newer, no-load share class,
NAEFX, with a 1.33% expense ratio.)
Schoenwald’s father—a lawyer by
training who died in 2012—got the
idea for investing in alternative energy
from his sailing hobby. He noticed
Photographs by
By LEWIS BRAHAM KYLE DOROSZ
Murray Rosenblith (left);
David Schoenwald