Successful investors used to be happy just to be rich. Then, when investing went mass market in the 1980s, they weren't satisfied unless they were dispensing advice in books, newspapers and on television. Nowadays there's another string to their bows endorsing their own quant index.
Joel Greenblatt, author of The Little Book That Beats the Markets and managing partner of Gotham Capital, is the latest to enter the fray with his Gotham Enhanced Value Index Series -- a quant strategy designed by Royal Bank of Scotland's equity derivatives team that replicates the magic formula outlined in his little book.
On the face of it, Greenblatt's formula is not a difficult one to understand or to...