Have you ever thought about your investment style? Most investors do not give much thought about their investment style. But if you don’t pay any attention to investment style at all, it can prove to be a problem in future.  A basic understanding of the major investment styles is necessary. Especially when there are thousands of investments.

The major investment styles can be sub-divided into three parts: growth or value investing, active or passive way of management and small cap or large cap companies. These sub-divisions have been discussed below for when you trade forex online.

Active or Passive Management
When you are trying to determine your investment style, you must first consider the degree to which they believe that financial experts can create greater than normal returns. If you want professional money managers to carefully select your investments, you must consider active management. Active management is a way of management in which a single manager, co-manager or a team of managers is appointed to actively manage holdings. Active managers utilise forecasts, analytical research and their own experience and judgement to make investment decisions. Actively managed funds are constantly under the scrutiny of portfolio managers and financial researchers who are focused on getting higher returns for investors.  Active management is expensive in comparison to passive management. This is because investors have to pay for the expertise of the managers and staff.

Passive management is a style that is generally associated with mutual funds or exchange traded funds. In this type of management, the fund’s portfolio mirrors a market index. Passive management is just the opposite of the active management in which a fund’s manager applies various investing strategies to stay ahead in the market and to make buying and selling decisions.  Many investors doubt the abilities of active managers to achieve higher returns. It is often seen that over a long period of time passive funds earn better than active funds. Passively managed funds do not require researchers. Thus, the expenses are low.

Growth or Value Investing
Next an investor must consider growth firms and value firms. They must choose which their preferred area of investment is. Growth firms are the firms that are showing fast growth whereas value firms are those firms that are underpriced industry leaders. Analysts look at a set of financial metrics and use their judgement to determine which category a company belongs to.  If you want to adopt the growth style, you should look for firms that have high return on equity, high profit margins and high earnings growth rates. Value style of investing is focused on investing on a strong firm at a good price point. When investing in value firms, you must check the low price to earnings ratio, dividend yield and low price to sales ratio.

Small Cap or Large Cap
As an investor, you must choose your preference between large cap firms and small cap firms. Market capitalisation is shortened to the frequently used term “cap”. The size of the company is measured to find its market capitalisation. This is done by multiplying the number of shares of the company with the share price.

Small cap companies often deliver better results as they have greater opportunities for growth. But an investor should also bear the greater risk factor in mind before investing in small cap. If you are an investor who prefers the comfort of lower risk and steady returns, you must invest in large cap.

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