human
I'm a little confused by all of these different types of investments. Can someone explain them to me?
assistant
Investing can be broken down into two main categories, active and passive. Active investing involves selecting stocks or other securities yourself and actively managing the portfolio in order to achieve your desired outcome. Passive investing is done through index funds and ETFs which track an index like the S&P 500 or the Russell 2000, so you are essentially buying a piece of that index without having to do any work.