Alpha, Activism and Ether

Alpha and beta.

A basic premise of the efficient markets hypothesis is that you shouldn't be able to beat the market in simple dumb ways. (Stronger forms say you shouldn't be able to beat it in difficult smart ways either, but leave that aside.) So buying stocks with relatively low prices, or low volatility, or good recent past performance, or that start with the letter R, or that have green logos, or buying on Monday and selling on Thursday, shouldn't get you returns that are better than a broad market index. But sometimes that stuff works anyway, and so there are "smart beta" funds that try to beat the market in simple dumb ways (sometimes with math, but still): They don't do much active trading or subjective stock-picking, but they do overweight stocks with relatively low prices, or low volatility, or good recent past performance, or whatever, because stocks with those factors have generally outperformed the overall market.