Is It Science or Is It Baloney?

Which currently popular investment fads are flashes in the pan, and which are actually worthy innovations? Which are somewhere in between?

Because the theoretical or academic pedigree of an investment strategy helps mightily to sell it, marketers often represent whatever they’re selling as “real science,” with roots in the work of Nobel Prize-winning financial economists. Some of these claims are entirely justified. Some are almost entirely hype. More often, they’re in between — good investment ideas that, sooner or later, take on the shape of fads and become crowded trades that lose their effectiveness.