Wall Street is always coming up with cunning new marketing techniques to attract tourist investors. These are less-sophisticated individual investors and advisers who are easily wowed by glitzy industry trends, only to abandon them when the strategy falls short of expectations. The latest spin to attract tourist money is “smart beta.” The phrase didn’t exist one year ago, yet a Google search today shows 190,000 results. The inference that investing this way is smart has ignited a strong interest among less-sophisticated investors while those who truly understand what’s behind these strategies find the phrase distasteful at best.
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