Breaking Down Smart Beta
March 4, 2016 - Equity Premium, Fundamental Valuation, Momentum Investing, Value Premium, Volatility Effects
What kinds of smart beta work best? In their January 2016 paper entitled “A Taxonomy of Beta Based on Investment Outcomes”, Sanne De Boer, Michael LaBella and Sarah Reifsteck compare and contrast smart beta (simple, transparent, rules-based) strategies via backtesting of 12 long-only smart beta stock portfolios. They assign these portfolios to a framework that translates diversification, fundamental weighting and factor investing into core equity exposure and style investing (see the figure below). They constrain backtests to long-only positions, relatively investable/liquid stocks and quarterly rebalancing, treating developed and emerging markets separately. Backtest outputs address gross performance, benchmark tracking accuracy and portfolio turnover. Using beta-related data for developed market stocks during 1979 through 2014 and emerging market stocks during 2001 through 2014, they find that: Keep Reading