Ethical investing is becoming more and more common today with investors striving not only to choose companies that perform well in which to invest, but ones that meet with their moral criteria as well. Ethical investors actively seek companies which implement certain societal and ecological policies and procedures in which to invest while they equally seek to avoid companies which engage in practices that they feel go against their moral beliefs. Investors who practice ethical investing are likely to put their money into companies who have instituted diversity policies like American Express and Bank of America and unlikely to invest in companies which could be seen as detrimental to society such as Philip Morris and Smith & Wesson.


The guidelines of ethical investing will vary from investor to investor. What investor A may find morally reprehensible, investor B may have no problem with whatsoever. When looking at ethical investing, one must understand that ethics and morals are in most cases, up to personal discretion. There are of course things that nearly everyone would agree are morally wrong (few people – hopefully – would be willing to invest in a company that openly practiced the use of child laborers in third world sweat shops, for example) but other practices may fall into more of a grey area.

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