Promising alternative to FTSE trackers

There's a curious stock-market anomaly that's exploited by this exchange-traded fund, says Paul Amery - less volatile stocks outperform more frenetic ones.

Some things in finance don't make sense, but exist nevertheless. One long-standing anomaly is the low-volatility effect'. All else being equal, you'd expect the riskiest stocks those with the most volatile share prices to have the highest long-term returns. Otherwise, there would be little reason to buy them the reward wouldn't compensate for the risk involved.

Yet evidence suggests that actually it's the least volatile shares that offer the highest long-term returns. Of course, this may just be one of those trends that everyone starts to notice just before it ends. "Small stocks always outperform larger ones" and "stocks always go up in the long run" has proved costly advice to those who joined the party late.

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Paul Amery

Paul is a multi-award-winning journalist, currently an editor at New Money Review. He has contributed an array of money titles such as MoneyWeek, Financial Times, Financial News, The Times, Investment and Thomson Reuters. Paul is certified in investment management by CFA UK and he can speak more than five languages including English, French, Russian and Ukrainian. On MoneyWeek, Paul writes about funds such as ETFs and the stock market.