Optimal Holdings of Active, Passive and Smart Beta Strategies

Volume 17, No. 2, 2019
Edmund Bellord, Joshua Livnat, Dan Porter and Martin B. Tarlie

The growing dominance of the core and explore model — a large passive index combined
with a collection of high tracking error satellite portfolios — in conjunction with the
growth of factor investing has renewed interest in how to allocate among different equity
strategies. We study this problem from an expected shortfall perspective and find that
portfolios that minimize expected shortfall differ substantially from portfolios generated
using conventional methods.