Equinox Fund Management Creates New Fund
Equinox Fund Management LLC, a sponsor of alternative investment funds, is launching Equinox Commodity Strategy Fund, a market-neutral mutual fund designed to produce returns by exploiting potential inefficiencies in the systematic selling and repurchasing of expiring future contracts commonly employed by long-only commodity strategies.
The fund offers investors an opportunity to diversify their current holdings in long-only commodity funds and ETFs by employing a long-short investment program designed to address, among other things, the high level of volatility inherent in many long-only commodity funds.
During the past ten years, long-only commodities have shown increasing correlation to other asset classes, which can be problematic because many investors seek out commodity funds for their supposed lack of correlation. The Equinox fund has shown lower correlation to other asset classes compared to long-only commodity funds.
The fund is also designed to address the challenge of systematic negative roll yields that long-only commodity funds and ETFs often face in commodity markets with rising price curves.
Investors who desire to hold a long position past the expiration of the current futures contract often must sell that contract at a lower price and pay a higher price to buy a new one to maintain exposure to the commodity, which is known as negative roll yield.
"The objective of the fund is to avoid incurring negative roll yield by using algorithms to optimize the manner and timing in which futures contracts are bought and sold," says Rich Bornhoft, CIO of Equinox Fund Management.
Edward Jones Adds UMA Models
Edward Jones, St. Louis, Mo., is adding Unified Managed Account models to Edward Jones Advisory Solutions.
The firm is partnering with Managed Portfolio Advisors, a division of Natixis Asset Management Advisors LP, and Vestmark to provide overlay management services for the UMA models, which will incorporate separately managed accounts, in addition to mutual funds and ETFs.
"The UMA offering can be tailored to the unique investment needs and tax considerations of each individual investor," says Rob Klapprodt, Vestmark president.
Sammons Offers Retirement Line
Sammons Financial Group, West Des Moines, Iowa, is launching a new business line, Sammons Retirement Solutions, with Bill Lowe as president.
The new line will distribute retirement-oriented products such as mutual funds and variable annuities through broker-dealers and their financial advisors.
Lowe has 25 years' experience in the business, mostly with ING, including being president of ING Individual Retirement Distribution.
Insurance Technologies Provides Electronic Processing
Sagicor Life has selected a program by Insurance Technologies LLC, Colorado Springs, Colo., known as FireLight for its electronic fulfillment solution. Insurance Technologies is a provider of sales automation solutions for the financial services industry.
FireLight provides straight-through processing capabilities for all lines of business from a single platform. With FireLight, Sagicor Life's distribution partners will be able to submit new, complete and orderly applications to Sagicor Life's home office. It will allow Sagicor to add, create and manage forms for their whole life, UL and term-life insurance products.
Brinker Capital Introduces Retirement ETF
Brinker Capital, Berwyn, Pa., an independent investment management firm, is adding seven ETF strategies to its defined contribution retirement plan offering. The move is designed to provide plan participants with additional means of capitalizing on the benefits of active, as well as passive, portfolio management.
The income stream of each ETF retirement strategy will depend on the investor's risk tolerance and time horizon, but each is designed to offer consistent, competitive performance while seeking to achieve better risk-adjusted returns over the long term.
NY Life Offers Pension Account
New York Life Investments is offering the Guaranteed Interest Pension Account to provide organizations with an investment option for near-term qualified pension plan liabilities.
The guaranteed plan is designed to allow sponsors to structure a portion of their assets to mirror liability cash flows. It allows the near-term segment of the market (those with near zero to five years) to have an investment option that guarantees principal and has a competitive yield.