Yesterday’s alpha has been unbundled into market capitalization index, factors and alpha-seeking investments. What does this mean for investors? Is active dead? Of course not! But factors can enhance traditional portfolios by considering a third dimension of return.

Wondering how style factors work and how to use them? The five Ws tell the story of the value, momentum, quality, size and minimum volatility factors.

Here’s what investors consider when deciding whether to invest in long-only or long-short factor strategies, including relative and absolute return goals.

In my many conversations with investors and industry peers about factor investing, one topic seems to always come up: factor investing timing. I’ve had recent discussions on this topic with a central bank whose managers need to think about preserving capital and with a more nimble RIA team which explicitly wants to use timing to pursue incremental returns.