You've almost certainly heard of index investing, also sometimes called passive investing. Here investment portfolios are constructed to replicate I given a market. The weighting given to each individual stock is determined by the size of each company, its market capitalisation. So for instance in the Australian market, the largest allocation would be to BHP, then Commonwealth Bank, CSL, etc.

The main alternative to index or passive investment is active investment. Here fund managers deploy various strategies in an effort to outperform the market average.

Factor investing sits in between these two approaches. It's been around for a long time, with mixed results. ETF offerings adopting a factor investing methodology are expanding in the Australian market, so this is an investment approach that you are likely to hear more about.

Let's get you up to speed.

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