Investing against the crowd is not easy. Contrarian investors often make bold bets that may take time—sometimes years or longer—before paying off. Contrarian investing comes in many different shapes.

Making its debut on 08/19/2003, smart beta exchange traded fund First Trust Value Line Dividend ETF (FVD) provides investors broad exposure to the Style Box - Large Cap Value category of the market.

SPDR® MSCI USA StrategicFactors ETF (QUS) was launched on 4/15/2015 and tracks the MSCI USA Factor Mix A-Series Capped Index. It has 593 holdings, a 30-day SEC yield of 1.39%, and an expense ratio of ...

Cap-weighted funds focus on large companies, impacting fund performance and risk. These funds often feature lower expense ratios due to minimal trading requirements. Consider your investment strategy ...

Although investors spend a great deal of time on stock selection, academic research has shown that aggregate characteristics of a diversified portfolio or index are often the primary drivers of risk ...

Equal-weight funds offer similar long-term returns as cap-weighted but higher volatility and expense ratios. Equal-weight strategy avoids over-concentration in large cap stocks, reducing bias toward ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Dan Irvine is an investment manager covering market trends. Over the past year and a half, the performance dynamics between the ...

As we’ve discussed before, not all indexes are created the same way. One of the major differences, in addition to characteristics such as size and style, can be the weighting scheme. Once indexes have ...