Would you, as investor, buy shares in the corporations reputed to have "unscrupulous, amoral" attitude?

Hypothesis: if you were a day trader/investor/stockbroker and the prediction for Halliburton, KBR, Wal-Mart, AT&T, GE, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and Monsanto stock bound to rise percentage 150% will be fulfilled, would you buy the hundreds or thousands of shares or avoid the companies in question due to ethical qualm? Is ethical investing completely irrelevant because it interferes with the express purpose of making profit as a matter of political statement in staunch far right-wing laissez-faire capitalist outlook?

Frankly if I knew a stock were going to go up 150% I would invest in it... You can actually make considerably more than a 150% profit on a move like that if you have an options account... Of course situations where you get guaranteed 150% returns don't show up much in real life...

Personally I can respect anyone who chooses not to invest in a particular company for moral reasons. Personally I would be leery of investing in a company that appeared to have dishonest management (though not for moral reasons so much as because the people who run such companies may seek to screw over their stockholders...) I can't recall ever not investing in a company for purely moral reasons, though I suppose I could think of situations where I'd be reluctant to do so...

Also personally I doubt that ethical investing has much effect on either the share price of a company or the actions of its management--there will always be people who won't have a problem with a particular company or just won't care.

Haha (Not laughing at you). I never really looked at it that way. I guess it is good to keep into consideration being ethical companies usually outperform unethical ones over the long-term. But hey, some people think eating meat is the most evil thing in the world. Will that keep you from buying shares of a company like McDonalds? Or some people might think soda is the evil of the world. Would that keep you from buying Coke? Some people might think people wearing shoes is against us as being children of the Earth. Will this keep you from buying Crocs? Just being alive in our society, you're already helping all these companies by purchasing their products, so what does it matter?

For capitalism and freedom
- Black

i don't buy companies that I think are unethical.........I don't buy tobacco companies,,,,,,,,,,

What is "ethical" or "amoral" is a completely subjective judgement.

I tend to stay away from companies that I think have shady business practices. Like HAL or KBR and their undue influence on getting no bid contracts for the Iraq war. Or WMT and their union busting practices. Stuff like that scares me into thinking there's much more going on that the public might not know about yet, and the greedy executives at those companies might be covering something up. I don't want to invest in the next Enron!

However, stuff like tobacco and defense companies, I would put money into those sectors, even if I don't like the business itself too much, as long as they're not purposely trying to cover things up, it's ok with me.

I'm not sure what's wrong with GE, or ATT??

If you don't want to invest in those kinds of companies, you don't have to! There's 1000s of publically traded companies that I'm sure you can find that most are perfectly OK.

I have a "dirty money" idea in my mind and don't invest in companies that are in businesses that I don't like. My list includes handguns, commercial prisons, pawnshops, casinos, distillers. Probably more if I stop to think about it. Companies that profit from the misery or stupidity of others.

On the other hand, I find it distracting to know the product of a company. I am a pure technical trader and believe the chart tells all. Don't confuse me with the product or its popularity or its endorsers. Or with the company's expected profits and other fundamental stuff like that. The only question is "do I expect it to go up" and "will I feel dirty by participation"?