A fun thing about the dot-com and crypto booms was how companies with no previous connection to dot-com or crypto added those terms to their names and watched their stock prices soar. Perhaps the greatest example is Long Island Ice Tea Corp. rebranding as Long Blockchain Corp. in 2017 with a promise to shift from making Arnold Palmers to making crypto. This resulted in a 300% rally, years of investigations and no crypto.

In what may be a hopeful sign for the climate, if not for investors, it turns out green rebranding can also move stock prices. Companies that gave themselves new names “likely to evoke sustainable feelings in investors” between 2000 and 2022 enjoyed one-day returns of 15%, on average, according to a new study by the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.