Hundreds of fundsters are converging today in New York City for the inaugural Inside Smart Beta conference about the passive-plus investing strategies also known as "strategic beta."

Matt Hougan Inside ETFs Chief Executive Officer

Matt Hougan's Inside ETFs team at Informa created the new conference.

"Smart beta is obviously one of the hottest themes going on in ETFs," Hougan tells MFWire. "There have been billions of inflows."

290 people and counting are registered for the brand new conference so far, Hougan says. Their other conferences include: Inside Fixed Income, Inside ETFs Europe, and the original and giant Inside ETFs conference. Watch for them to launch Inside ETFs Asia in Hong Kong next year.

The Inside Smart Beta conference is scheduled to begin this morning at the Times Center in midtown Manhattan's Times Square. There's also a cocktail reception tonight at the nearby Bryant Park Grill. And the conference sessions will continue tomorrow morning before wrapping up at lunch time.

Hougan and Dave Nadig, vice president and director of ETFs at FactSet (the company that bought the data side of Inside ETFs' former parent, ETF.com), will kick things off this morning with an opening keynote.

Other featured speakers scheduled to appear include: Andrew Ang, head of factor-based strategies at BlackRock [profile]; Melissa Brown, senior director of applied research at Axioma; Ronen Israel, principal at AQR [profile]; Jay Pelosky, principal & founder of J2Z Advisory; Justin Sibears, managing director at Newfound; and many more.

Deutsche [profile], FTSE Russell, the Hartford [profile], BlackRock's iShares [profile], J.P. Morgan [profile], MSCI, Nuveen [profile], OppenheimerFunds [profile], Invesco PowerShares [profile], and SSgA [profile] are all sponsoring the event. 

Correction: A prior version of this story mischaracterized Factset's ETF.com deal. Factset bought the data side of ETF.com, while BATS bought the publishing side and Informa bought the conference side (i.e. Inside ETFs).

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