Article: No brains needed.

Byline: Chris Dillow

PORTFOLIOS: Our no-brain portfolios suggest that markets might be efficient.

Could it be that the stock market is efficient, in the sense that you can only out-perform it by taking on extra risks? The performance of our no-brain portfolios in 2008 - a year when risks materialized most nastily - suggests it could be.

Those portfolios that do take extra risks had a horrible 2008. Our value portfolio - the 20 highest dividend yielders - fell 69.8 per cent and out high beta portfolio dropped 56.1 per cent. This suggests that the previous good performance of these strategies - in the two years before the credit crunch began on 1 ...

Related newspaper, magazine, and journal articles:

 
 
Newsweek Harper's Magazine The Washington Post Chicago Tribune Crain's Chicago Business PRNewswire Pediatric News The Nation Advertising Age The Economist (US) A FREE trial gives you access to over 80 million articles! Access over 6,500 publications with a FREE trial!