Lukas Smart will be speaking at our
Investing in Smart Beta Conference
March 22 in Ft. Lauderdale
Enter discount code: smartbeta and attend for $49
Though smart beta products have swelled in popularity, they aren’t new.
In fact, Lukas Smart has been managing smart beta-style portfolios for more than eight years, and his firm, the Austin, Texas-based Dimensional Fund Advisors, has been offering strategies that mirror fundamental indexing for over 35 years.
“We already have a broad body of work,” Smart says. “Over the past few decades, Dimensional is one of the largest out-of-sample tests into whether or not dimension- or factor-based investing works, and clients have noticed the returns we have been able to achieve.”
Smart, a senior portfolio manager and vice president of Dimensional Fund Advisors, will speak at the upcoming Investing in Smart Beta conference March 22 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Unlike many of the “smart beta” funds out there, Dimensional’s offerings have proven multiyear track records and experienced managers, like Smart.
“It’s an exciting time to be working at Dimensional,” Smart says. “We’re happy that the market is starting to embrace the concept of strategic beta, because it gives us more opportunities to tell our story.”
Smart employs Dimensional’s factor-based, research-driven approach in the funds he manages. The approach leads to a portfolio composition that resembles many smart beta indexes and products, but arrives at its destination differently. Unlike most smart beta managers, Smart does not use a fundamentaly-weighted index to make investment decisions.
“Incorporating multiple factors into our approach leads to better diversification,” Smart says. From Dimensional’s perspective, a stock can’t be adequately analyzed on the basis of returns or market capitalization alone.
He says markets are changing to favor DFA’s factor-based fund management style.