Investing and Intentions in Financial Markets

Ethical investors are widely thought of two have two main goals. The negative goal of avoiding their investments to be morally tainted. The positive goal to further a certain ethical value they embrace or some normatively laden idea they hold by investing their money in a certain company. In light of these goals, the purpose of this essay is to provide an account of how we can explicitly include investors’ intentions when conceiving of ethical investment. The central idea is that an investor’s intentions may act as both a negative and a positive qualifier for making investing ethical. If we subscribe to this account, there are interesting upshots with respect to how ethical investing compares to ethical giving as effective altruists construe it.