Feeling good at the stock exchange: on impact as an affective valuation device

How is ‘impact’ made investible on the stock exchange? This article examines the impact report as an affective valuation device operating through specific document arrangements within financial markets. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with a European venture capital firm investing in East Africa, it traces the making and circulation of an impact report – from its construction in the region to its afterlife across stock exchange communications. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), valuation studies, and economic sociology, the article approaches impact reporting as a qualculative practice. While oriented toward measuring impact, the report does not primarily stabilise outcomes once it circulates at the stock exchange. Instead, through arrangements of numbers, narratives, and visual elements, it enacts impact as a forward-looking, affective promise of ‘doing good’ that can be anticipated and acted upon without reconfiguring financial valuation tools. Moreover, as the report circulates, its elements are detached and reassembled across financial documents, enabling ‘impact’ itself to migrate and work as a mobile valuation prompt. The productivity of this prompt lies in its thinness: because impact remains weakly specified, it can be absorbed into conventional finance-as-usual while sustaining a shared orientation on what counts as ‘doing good’ beyond financial return.