AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICAL INVESTING

Ethical investing is, simply put, investing while taking into consideration your personal beliefs or your ethics. Because it is personal, it means that ethical investing is subjective as what is ethical to one person might not be ethical to another. Companies nurture their own ethics based on what their company believes in and stands for, thus they designate their effort in investments into ventures that they believe help promote their ethics.

Having ethics in a company means that the company is aiming to prosper in the way that affects the world to achieve positive change or at least affects the world into not getting worse. Ethical investing focuses on financial goals that mainly benefit the people involved and even the world we all live in. In ethical investing, every action and decision is another step towards the ethical goal. Ethical investing may stand for different advocacies. In this tutorial, we will be tackling all of them. In addition, we will delve into the specifics of ethical investing such as the processes involved, the ways to research about it, the advantages and disadvantages of ethical investing and what legacy ethical investing leaves for the next generation.

Ethical investing fights for different things. One of the most prolific types of ethical investing is the environmentally-conscious investing. This is the type of ethical investment where the investors are concerned with the environment and its problems such as energy, waste, and pollution. Another type of ethical investing is the socially responsible investing where investors are concerned about their companies’ relation with other companies, the community it caters to, and the society. Investors concerned with workers’ rights are involved with the welfare of workers and their human rights. Some of the focus of this type of ethical investing is to make sure that workers have their rights such as the right to freedom of speech, the right to life, liberty and personal security, and other rights. The corporate governance investment is the type of ethical investing that makes sure that companies manage themselves appropriately in relation to their shareholders and stakeholders taking into account the integrity, honesty, and transparency of the company.

Ethical investing is a very noble venture in the field of investing. Knowing what you stand for and what you want to fight for is important in nurturing wealth because if you do it only for yourself then what is the point?