Funds

This is probably the last category we would see under the "investor" category.

Funds are basically pooled vehicles. They are collective investment outfits. They collect cash from individual investors, pool them and then use it to make further investments in stocks, bonds and other financial instruments. Given their quantum of operations they enjoy economies of scale. So they would be in a position to afford quality personnel to manage the funds, able to extract better terms on transaction costs, able to better diversify etc.

There are various types of funds:
Mutual funds - Collecting cash from individual investors for onward investments

Pension funds - The pension contributed by millions of individuals forms the corpus for this fund. The fund managers then use this cash for making investments.

Hedge funds - In simple terms this is like a mutual fund for really large and wealthy investors. These guys cough up the cash and regulatoryly the hedge fund has more flexibility with respect to choosing its investment vehicles

Sovereign fund - This is a fund which is owned by government or a state owned entity. They may choose to invest in specific sectors or be sector agnostic.

Private Equity fund/ Venture capital fund - A team of investors join to create this fund. The fund then looks for various investment opportunities with respect to start up companies/ unlisted companies or even listed entities.

There may be a thousand other types of funds. Don't get bogged down by the jargon. They all do the same things - collect cash from willing investors and invest in appropriate opportunities. Who gives the cash and where they invest, define their personalities.