The pandemic and its consequent effects taught us many things – one of which is that no company is bulletproof. The market doesn’t have any friends. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been dominating it for decades. You’re still prone to suffer downturns every once in a while.
Regardless of ups and downs, however, investors lay a large preference towards tech stocks in the longer term. Historically speaking, global stock markets have been dominated by tech stocks, and they continue to grow exponentially.
Another growing market trend in recent years is that of ethical investment. These days, the stock market consists of traders who want more than just solid financial returns, and the value of positive societal impact is increasing by the day.
That brings us to the question…
What is Ethical Investing?
In layman’s terms, ethical investing is directly your money towards causes and companies that can play a role in improving the world. Naturally,, companies advocate for human and animal rights, or even those trying to shun the societal prevalence of harmful substances like tobacco or alcohol.
The field itself is very broad but mainly consists of three subcategories:
- environmental,
- social, and
- corporate governance
If you want to be considerate towards the world and its sustainability, read on ahead to discover tips for ethical investment in tech.
1. Ensure Company Standards are Maintained
Public companies are required to publish an annual audit report. These reports are compiled and submitted by third-party auditors, not the company itself. Monitoring these reports can give you the answers you’re looking for.
If you find a company backtracking for the standards of ethics that caused you to invest in the first place, consider withdrawing your investment.
2. Pay Attention to the Buzzwords
It’s 2021, and long gone is the time when companies could just add filler words in reports to fool people.
When carrying out your assessment, ensure that you keep an eye open for buzzwords that may seem to align with ethical investment but, are really just ways to satisfy readers without the company ever actually doing anything. For example, “carbon neutral” and “carbon net-zero” are not the same thing.
3. What Do Employees Think of the Company?
Often you’ll find businesses fulfilling their responsibilities related to the environment while sustaining multiple other issues on the inside.
These issues may include gender pay parity, for example. Any insight you can gain as to the working environment within a company can help guide you as to whether or not it is worth your money.
To Conclude
With everything going on in the world and experts claiming things are just bound to get worse from here on out, it is our job to live more responsibly. Supporting companies that are destroying the environment will only continue to create more issues – and pandemics – for the world. Ignorance might be bliss but, it is not the solution to this problem.