Burt Malkiel, once against “smart beta”, is finally embracing it

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/business/burton-malkiel-investment-stock-index-funds.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FStewart%2C%20James%20B.&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

To be clear, it's not the same "smart beta" like Personal Capital, where each industry is weighted equally, in an attempt to sell you on "diversifying the risk".

The punchline: "A large and growing body of academic research suggests there are market anomalies that can be exploited to beat a strict index approach"

More context: "Burton Malkiel, a Princeton economics professor, made an assertion that was startling at the time: that 'a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at the stock listings could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one selected by the experts'...Maybe the experts can beat the monkeys after all. That is, if the experts are software engineers writing sophisticated algorithms for computer-generated trading."