Thematic investing is another broad category of strategies. Thematic strategies can use broad macroeconomic, demographic, or political drivers, or bottom-up ideas on industries and sectors, to identify investment opportunities. Disruptive technologies, processes, and regulations; innovations; and economic cycles can present investment opportunities and can also pose challenges to existing companies. Investors in this category constantly search for new and promising ideas or themes that will drive the market in the future.

It is also important to determine whether any new trend is structural (and hence long-term and ongoing) or short-term in nature. Structural changes can have long-lasting impacts on the way people behave or how a market operates. For example, the development of smartphones and tablets and the move towards cloud computing are examples of structural changes. On the other hand, a manager might attempt to identify companies with significant sales exposure to foreign countries as a way to benefit from short-term views on currency movements. The success of a structural thematic investment depends equally on the ability to take advantage of future trends and the ability to avoid what will turn out to be just fashionable for a short time.