Zacks Investment Management believes the following: Markets are very efficient over the long run and the ability to outperform using active management is limited to managers who have the discipline to maintain a proven investment process through all market environments. Academic research shows equity anomalies exist but the excess returns generated from these anomalies can only be realized by holding stocks exposed to the anomaly over long periods of time. Proven multi‐factor strategies run in a systematic and disciplined manner can generate meaningful alpha over a full market cycle, while simultaneously tempering the periods of underperformance that would be experienced by a single anomaly. Zacks Investment Management utilizes tools and models developed in‐house to create investment strategies based on statistical anomalies backed by academic and proprietary research. With regard to their Small Cap Core strategy, ZIM’s believes that estimate revisions are a leading indicator of future stock performance and that small- to mid-size companies exhibit stronger price response to earnings estimate revisions.