Research Affiliates On Identifying Smart Beta’s Counterparties

It’s well established that most retail investors, and quite a few financial professionals, blunt their own returns by chasing returns – buying near peaks and selling into a bear market when they should be doing the opposite. Smart beta aims to avoid this problem by recognizing that most of us are terrible stock pickers and then taking the emotion out of investing by tacking close to the index, selling stocks that have recently outperformed and buying those that have dipped in price.

The usual assumption is that smart beta just plays counterparty to retail investors, but it turns out that the full picture is more complicated.

Fund flows follow the same procyclical pattern

To show how herd investing can ensnare fund managers...