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Buy and hold strategies typically outperform active management of portfolios. Few active strategies though outperform passive strategies on a consistent basis. This study is an attempt to back-test some simple active strategies that most investors can replicate with little effort. Criteria for these strategies include size and/or value strategies applied within the S&P 500 index. Other criteria included short interest and comparable ratios. These strategies consistently outperform the S&P 500 index total return over a long period of time. Size factor generated an excess annualized return of 8.54% over a 15 year period and a combination of size, value and other factors generated excess annualized return of 20.4% over the same period. Combination strategy generated a cumulative return of 2849% relative to 704% for the size factor and 1019% for the value factor over this 15 year period. This study corroborates the emergence of smart beta strategies and factor based investing that is becoming popular in this era.

Value, growth, performance, active, passive, s&p 500, index