Smart Beta ETF Investing: Access Potential Drivers of Return
Smart beta investing seeks to provide a cost-effective, rules-based strategy to potentially outperform a traditional market cap-weighted benchmark. Smart beta ETFs are designed to capture specific factors, or investment characteristics, that drive risk and return — and can do so in a relatively low-cost, systematic manner.
Factors—characteristics such as value, quality, size, momentum, volatility and dividend yield — are one of three elements that can drive portfolio returns. Extensive research has shown that factor exposure accounts for 50% to 80% of a portfolio’s excess return above a market cap-weighted benchmark.1
Seek Alpha
Supplement a traditional index portfolio by accessing factors or risk premia that drive alpha
Mitigate Downside Volatility
Enhance risk-adjusted returns by gaining exposure to factors that tend to perform relatively well during market downturns
Search for Yield
Increase income-generation by tilting a portfolio toward higher-yielding assets
Lower Costs
Seek outperformance through vehicles with lower fees and better tax efficiency than actively managed strategies
Access Uncorrelated Returns
Improve portfolio diversification by increasing exposure to factors with lower correlation to the broader market
Screens/Tilts to Capture Factor Premia
Six primary factors have historically outperformed the market cap-weighted benchmark. Harnessing the potential of smart beta requires understanding the screens or tilts that can be used to access these factors.
Single Factor
Investors can use single-factor smart beta ETFs to add exposures one at a time based on their market views or needs. This approach can make it easier to attribute performance more precisely and allow investors to tailor the implementation to their specific beliefs and objectives.
Multi-Factor
Multi-factor smart beta ETFs combine two or more factors to capture a variety of factor risk premia and achieve a diversified exposure. This approach can allow investors to take advantage of diversification benefits across factors while potentially removing some of the performance cyclicality associated with single-factor investments. It also allows investors to address multiple objectives in a cost-efficient way.
State Street’s SPDR smart beta ETFs are built in partnership with the world’s leading index providers and fueled by expertise that comes from more than 25 years of smart beta experience. We pay rigorous attention to the many details — from design to execution — that can add up to important performance and diversification benefits for investors.
Across a range of smart beta strategies, our ETFs allow investors to target factor premia that can deliver superior risk-adjusted returns.