They know cost is a key variable in predicting performance and it allows them to better protect their own fees. Let’s stop for a minute and just take note of that last sentence because it is the single-biggest driving force all fund flows for the past 10 years — and likely the next 20 years.

Low cost, check.

Quant: Factor investing is hot, winning over the clients of traditional discretionary active managers. Factor investing looks for characteristics of stocks that academic studies have shown to explain outperformance over time. Factor investing is typically rules-based, meaning it effectively removes emotion from the equation.

The most popular — and respected — factors are value, momentum, quality and low volatility. The problem for many advisors is trying to figure out which factors to use and when. GSLC attempts to solve this by combining four factors into one fund using separate sub-indexes with their own calculations, as seen below.

Convenience, check.

Brand: ETF investors favor products with some brand recognition, if not rock-star sizzle. Goldman is a top-shelf brand. If a smaller or less-established firm offered the same product, even for the same fee, it likely wouldn’t as big a smash hit as GSLC. Being able to offer clients a new quantitative strategy that was once reserved only for Goldman’s institutional clients is appealing to any investor and part of the ongoing democratization of investing ushered in by ETFs.

Rock-star element, check.

Safety: GSLC is very similar to the S&P 500 in that its top five holdings are the same: Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and JPMorgan. It has a 98.5 percent correlation to the stock market thanks to a 73 percent overlap with the index, which is almost double that of a typical active mutual fund at about 40 percent (which have long been criticized of “closet indexing”).

It is arguably a bad strategy investment-wise to hug the S&P 500, but in terms of asset gathering it is a great strategy because it allows advisors to tell a “story” without the risk of significant underperformance. Most advisor clients do not have the stomach for a more pure, highly active style of factor investing. That’s what some daring, and unfortunately unloved, ETFs attempt to do. These products are typically used in smaller portions to complement the core of a broader portfolio, whereas GSLC can be used to replace the core.

Won’t get advisor fired, check.