Should you buy into ‘smart beta’?

'Smart beta' has got the big institutional investors excited. But what is it, and should you be excited too? Paul Amery investigates.

Smart beta' has got big institutional investors buzzing. So what is it, and should you be getting excited too?

Beta' is the performance you get when you buy the whole market and alpha' is the value you can add (or subtract) by taking on bets against the market. You would buy beta through an index fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) at a low cost, whereas alpha is what you pay an active fund manager rather more to try and achieve. Since it's very hard to find a fund manager who produces alpha consistently, many investors have switched to indexing.

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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.