Is Smart Beta Really Smart?

摘要

"Smart Beta is much more about smart marketing than it is smart investing," argues Burton Malkiel. Some smart beta strategies do outperform their benchmarks over some periods, but not all, he notes. Any excess return these strategies achieve is from the greater risk they take on by tilting toward small-cap, value or other non-cap weighting, Malkiel advises in an exclusive interview with Institutional Investor Journals.Outperformance of these strategies cannot be attributed to their inherent advantage over traditional market-cap approaches, maintains the Princeton University Economist and Author of the seminal book A Random Walk Down Wall Street. The latest edition of the volume details his analysis of smart beta strategies. Read on for Malkiel's assessment of performance data from Research Affiliates and Dimensional Fund Advisors-and for Rob Arnott's spirited rebuttal.