%0 Journal Article %A Jennifer Bender %A Taie Wang %A Riva Atlas %T Practical Applications of Can the Whole Be More Than the Sum of the Parts? Bottom-Up versus Top-Down Multifactor Portfolio Construction %D 2016 %R 10.3905/pa.2016.4.2.173 %J Practical Applications %P 1-4 %V 4 %N 2 %X Can the Whole Be More Than the Sum of the Parts? Bottom-Up versus Top-Down Multifactor Portfolio Construction Jennifer Bender Taie Wang Jenn Bender and Taie Wang of State Street Global Advisors set out to answer a question their clients had been asking: What is the difference between investing in single-factor ETFs versus investing a single multifactor ETF containing the same factors?Bender, who is Managing Director and Director of Research for Global Equity Beta at SSGA, says “It was hard to definitively answer, given that the various single and multifactor portfolios are based on different methodologies.”The authors’ findings show that single-factor portfolio spersistently under perform. Although they expected to see some difference between the strategies, the level of out performance genuinely surprised them. The clue to the disparity is in how factors interact with each other. %U https://pa.pm-research.com/content/iijpracapp/4/2/1.8.full.pdf