We use a holdings-based attribution model to disaggregate the benchmark-adjusted returns to U.S. equity mutual funds into components that reflect persistent segment tilts, the timing of segment returns, and stock selection relative to their benchmarks. We find that large-cap funds add value by...

Twenty years ago there were only five equity factors (market, value, small-cap, momentum, and low beta). Today the literature contains research papers on hundreds of supposed factors, most of which will not produce a reliable positive premium in the future. Rather than adopting a statistical...

Factor returns, net of changes in valuation levels, are much lower than recent performance suggests. Value-add can be structural, and thus reliably repeatable, or situational—a product of rising valuations—likely neither sustainable nor repeatable. Many investors are performance chasers who...

In our paper — “How Can ‘Smart Beta' Go Horribly Wrong?” — we show, using U.S. data, that the relative valuation of a strategy (in comparison with its own historical norms) is correlated with the strategy's subsequent return at a five-year horizon. The high past performance of many of...

This is the first in a series of papers we will publish in 2017 that demonstrate factor tilts generally deliver far less alpha in live portfolios than they do on paper, or put another way, investment managers generally fail to capture the returns that would be expected based on their factor...

In a series of papers we published in 2016, we show that relative valuations predict subsequent returns for both factors and smart beta strategies in exactly the same way price matters in stock selection and asset allocation. To many, one surprising revelation in that series is that a number of...

Absent mandatory reporting, and although many companies report their carbon emissions, much of the emissions data are estimated by data providers. As we evaluate the forward-looking carbon scores from several popular data providers, we find no evidence that these scores predict future changes in...

Absent mandatory reporting, and although many companies report their carbon emissions, much of the emissions data are estimated by data providers. As we evaluate the forward-looking carbon scores from several popular data providers, we find no evidence that these scores predict future changes in...

Historically, manager skill has been measured simply as the difference in average returns between the portfolio and the benchmark index. Managers were considered skillful if their active weights against the benchmark led to outperformance. However, a manager tilting toward a certain risk-factor,...