Smart beta exchange-traded funds (SB ETFs) have caught the attention of investors due to their supposed ability to offer a better risk-return trade-off than traditionally structured passive indices. Yet, research covering the performance of SB ETFs benchmarked to traditional cap-weighted market...

Selecting stock portfolios and assessing their relative volatility risk compared to the market as a whole, market indices, or other portfolios is of great importance to professional fund managers and individual investors alike. Our research uses the cross-sectional intrinsic entropy (CSIE) model...