PRESS RELEASE

Research Affiliates Introduces
Smart Beta Interactive Website


 



Media Contacts:
U.S. & Canada:
Tucker Hewes
Hewes Communications, Inc.
Phone: 212-207-9451
hewesteam@hewescomm.com

EMEA:
JPES Partners (London)
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7520 7620
ra@jpespartners.com

  • Provides estimates of expected returns, relative valuations, and trading costs across factors and smart beta strategies.
  • Visit https://interactive.researchaffiliates.com/smart-beta

NEWPORT BEACH, California (February 16, 2017) – Research Affiliates launches Smart Beta Interactive, a new website that provides investors information on factors and smart beta strategies, including past performance history, relative valuations, estimates of prospective alpha, and liquidity and risk attributions as well as other implementation characteristics. This interactive website spans factors, such as value, income, low volatility, quality, momentum, multi-factor, and size, and an array of widely used “smart beta” strategies.

Our industry focuses intense attention on past performance, even though this is a flawed predictor for the future. By going beyond historical returns, Smart Beta Interactive is meant to benefit the investment community by providing a richer toolkit, emphasizing future return expectations anchored on relative valuations and transaction costs.

We invite you to explore https://interactive.researchaffiliates.com/smart-beta

Rob Arnott, Chairman and CEO, Research Affiliates:
“The Smart Beta Interactive website is the culmination of years of research around smart beta and factor valuations. We believe investors should not focus on strategies and factors with brilliant recent results. We all fare much better when we emphasize factors or strategies that are trading cheap relative to their own historical norms, and deemphasize the more expensive factors or strategies. Now all investors have access to an online tool that will help them make this determination for themselves.”

Chris Brightman, Chief Investment Officer, Research Affiliates:
“Smart beta, also called factor investing, applies well-vetted research findings to create simple, transparent, low-cost investment strategies that offer the opportunity to outperform the market. Today, after more than a decade of success delivering excess returns to investors through the Fundamental Index, we find a proliferation of competing factor-based products. With this new tool, we provide investors the information they need to make informed decisions: clear methodology descriptions, historical risks and returns, turnover, transaction costs, capacity, current valuations, and even robust forecasts of future returns.”

John West, Head of Client Strategies, Research Affiliates:
“How do we make smart beta provide the greatest investor benefit?  Hint: It’s not choosing the best ‘backtest alpha’ and the inherent returns chasing it produces.  Instead, our new tool helps investors focus on what matters for their own journey forward by setting reasonable forward expectations and understanding the transaction costs embedded in the various strategies, particularly as they gain larger scale.”

For further information please contact:
US: Tucker Hewes, Hewes Communications, Inc., +1 (212) 207-9450,
hewesteam@hewescomm.com

Europe: Matt Rogers, JPES Partners, +44 (0)20 7520 7624, ra@jpespartners.com

About Research Affiliates
Research Affiliates, LLC, is a global leader in smart beta and asset allocation. Founded in 2002 and based in Newport Beach, California, Research Affiliates is dedicated to creating value for investors and seeking to have a profound impact on the global investment community through its insights and products. The firm’s investment strategies are built on a strong research base and are led by Rob Arnott and Chris Brightman. Research Affiliates delivers solutions in partnership with some of the world’s leading financial institutions through their offerings of mutual funds, ETFs, separately managed accounts, and/or commingled accounts. As of December 31, 2016, about $169 billion in assets are managed worldwide using investment strategies developed by Research Affiliates. 

Web: www.researchaffiliates.com
Twitter: @ra_insights

Neither Research Affiliates, LLC, nor its related entities provide investment advice outside of the United States, Ireland, and Canada, and do not offer or sell any securities, commodities, or derivative instruments or products. Any such business may only be conducted through registered or licensed entities and individuals permitted to do so within the respective jurisdiction and only in conjunction with the legally required disclosure documents and subject to all legally required regulatory filings and/or exemptions.

The trademarks Fundamental Index and RAFI, and the Research Affiliates trademark and corporate name and all related logos, are the exclusive intellectual property of Research Affiliates, LLC, and in some cases are registered trademarks in the United States and other countries. Various features of the Fundamental Index methodology, including an accounting data–based noncapitalization data-processing system and method for creating and weighting an index of securities, are protected by various patents, and patent-pending intellectual property of Research Affiliates, LLC. (See all applicable US Patents, Patent Publications, Patent Pending intellectual property and protected trademarks located at https://www.researchaffiliates.com/en_us/about-us/legal.html#patent-trademarks-copyright which are fully incorporated herein.)  Any use of these trademarks, logos, patented, or patent-pending methodologies without the prior written permission of Research Affiliates, LLC, is expressly prohibited. Research Affiliates, LLC, reserves the right to take any and all necessary action to preserve all of its rights, title, and interest in, and to, these marks, patents, or pending patents.