Depending on your choices, Marcus Invest adopts one of three strategies to invest your money. The amount of your balance invested in each fund in your portfolio depends on your risk tolerance and your time horizon.

Basic strategy of Marcus Invest

Core puts you in a low-cost, diversified ETF portfolio that works similarly to most standard robo-advisor portfolios. It includes around 12 funds, including a small cash allocation. This number of funds is comparable to many robo-advisers, but you can achieve similar diversification with much less choice of funds. This is one of the reasons why Vanguard’s offerings have ranked so well in Forbes Advisor’s Best Robotics Advisors rankings.

Notably, Marcus Invest’s core portfolio includes allocations to value and small cap equity funds, which have historically outperformed other types of funds over the long term.

Marcus Invest impact strategy

Impact invests in funds that perform well on environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics from third-party assessors, which means they choose companies that have a positive impact on society and the environment and are governed in a socially conscious manner. You’ll also avoid sectors like coal, tobacco, and guns.

Since ESG funds require more research and management than standard funds, they tend to charge higher expense ratios. Many investors are willing to pay a bit more for social good, but the ESG approach to investing has also come under criticism. Some of them ask if the companies included in ESG funds are really as progressive as they seem (Facebook, for example), which means that you could pay a premium to invest in companies that do not fully match. to your values.

Marcus Invest Smart Beta Strategy

The smart beta strategy uses a proprietary methodology that evaluates companies on fundamental and technical performance metrics and aims to outperform the market. This type of investment style is riskier and suitable for more aggressive investors.

A smart beta portfolio from Marcus Invest would include active ETFs, as well as more standard passive funds. Some of these may include Goldman Sachs ETFs — Marcus Invest grants you account credit for expense ratios incurred when choosing Goldman Sachs funds for your portfolio.

Note that Smart Beta is not available for retirement accounts.