Smart beta

Smart beta investment portfolios offer the benefits of passive strategies combined with some of the advantages of active ones, placing it at the intersection of efficient-market hypothesis and classic value investing. Smart beta investment portfolios offer the benefits of passive strategies combined with some of the advantages of active ones, placing it at the intersection of efficient-market hypothesis and classic value investing. Offering an optimal blend of active and passive styles of management, a smart beta portfolio is low cost due to the systematic nature of its core philosophy - achieving optimal efficiency by way of tracking an underlying index (e.g., MSCI World Ex US). Combining with optimization techniques traditionally used by active managers, the strategy can offer risk/return potentials that are more attractive than a plain vanilla active or passive product. Originally theorized by Harry Markowitz in his work on Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), smart beta is a response to a question that forms the basis of MPT - how to best construct the optimally diversified portfolio. Smart beta answers this by allowing a portfolio to expand on the efficient frontier (post-cost) of active and passive. As a typical investor owns both the active and index fund, most will benefit from adding smart beta exposure to their portfolio in addition to their existing allocations. Smart beta strategies have generated considerable interest from institutional investors in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. According to ETF.com, as of April 2019 there was approximately $880 billion invested in smart beta funds. The increase in demand has led to an increase in the number of products and there are more than 1000 smart beta ETFs on the market today. The demand/growth does not appear to be slowing down; in the 12-month period ending February 2019 77 new smart beta ETFs launched accounting for roughly 1/3 of all ETFs launched in the 12 month period.