Years ago, I was speaking at an investment industry conference when a man in the front row yelled out, "Is this just another rubber chicken presentation on asset allocation?" I responded with, "Fasten your seatbelt!" and I'll say it again here.

Investment risk means many different things to different people. Yet for decades the investment world has relied primarily on one particular measure of risk, standard deviation, which I believe doesn’t apply very well to today’s markets.

There are some pitfalls to diversification. Here are some ways to improve upon it

It’s an art and a science to manage risk, but there are some time-tested methods for estimating what you might make.

Following traditional value-at-risk models leads to a false sense of security.

Poor Harry Markowitz. Every time investors get whipped in the financial markets, they take it out on his Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). Never mind that the groundbreaking concept has governed investment discipline for more than 40 years and that Markowitz won a Nobel Prize for it in 1990.

For information on this article, please contact Smart Portfolios^TM at info@smartportfolios.com or (877) 686-3636

First came mutual funds that hold other mutual funds. The first wave of mutual funds that hold ETFs was just a matter of time. The CEO and founder of Smart Portfolios^TM LLC, Bryce James, manages the Aston/Smart Allocation ETF Fund, which launched in January.

Weak market could raise new questions about the concept.

Aston Asset Management, the $5 billion AUM ex-ABN Amro subsidiary, is getting into the ETFs game with a fund of funds. The Chicago-based fund firm launched a Smart Portfolios^TM sub-advised mutual fund of ETFs Friday morning.

We are excited about entering into a Fund of ETFs with the team at Smart Portfolios^TM, LLC, states Ken Anderson, President of Aston. This space is a new direction for Aston Funds and one that we feel complements our current fund line-up well.

Opening keynote speaker, Bryce James, of the American investment management firm Smart Portfolios^TM Inc., traced the evolution of asset allocation theory.

To a growing number of sophisticated investors, modern portfolio theory is begining to seem a bit outmoded.