Investors Are Still Chasing Alpha Despite Clear Evidence This Chase Is ‘Brainless’ Hot

 

Brainless Alphas are mechanical approaches to investing, and their appeal is obvious – someone has already done all the thinking so finding alpha is easy!

 

Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) has attracted billions of investment dollars with its factor investing approach, and Research Affiliates (RAFI) has attracted more than $100 billion into its fundamental indexes. Smart beta investing is a tilt toward smaller companies and toward value, primarily because history shows that this tilt would have beaten the market. But history doesn’t necessarily have to repeat itself; smart beta will work until it doesn’t.

 

The active flavor of Brainless Alpha is also attracting assets. Active Share is the percentage of portfolio holdings that do not match the benchmark’s allocations, and big bets are a necessary condition for alpha. It is mathematically necessary to deviate from the benchmark in order to produce an alpha, but big bets are not a sufficient condition for success because the bets can be wrong.

 

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