Is ‘Smart Beta’ Just a Fancy Word Trick?
Are ‘smart beta’ strategies really a new and better breed than competing investment strategies or just an innovative word trick for something else? James Montier, a member of GMO’s asset allocationteam observes: “When these strategies are corrected for their exposure to ‘value’ and ‘small,’ they exhibit no statistically significant outperformance compared to the cap weighted benchmark. …