Products July 12, 2010

Brinker Capital to Launch Absolute Return Portfolio within SMA

Brinker Capital has announced plans to launch an absolute return portfolio embedded in a separately managed account (SMA) format.

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The Brinker Capital Crystal Strategy is designed to help financial advisers preserve client capital in down markets while capturing appreciation in up markets. It will be available to Brinker Capital’s advisers in September.  

According to the announcement, the Brinker Capital Crystal Strategy will take a three-tiered approach to investing: allocating broadly among different asset classes, investing in multiple diverse strategies, and using highly-focused stock selection. Using tactical and strategic processes, Brinker Capital will broadly allocate The Brinker Capital Crystal Strategy across six major asset classes, including domestic and foreign equity, fixed income, absolute return, real assets, private equity, and cash.   

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Within these asset classes, Brinker Capital will employ a diversity of investment vehicles, including individual stocks, exchange-traded funds, closed-end funds, open-end funds, and Master Limited Partnerships, among others.   

By focusing only on a limited number of stocks that represent its best ideas, Brinker Capital said it believes clients will receive higher return potential with little incremental portfolio risk.  

The Brinker Capital Crystal Strategy will perform much like other absolute return strategies, but will have lower fees compared to many vehicles and daily liquidity, the announcement said. Clients will have daily transparency into their account holdings. The investment minimum will be $100,000.  

More information is at http://www.brinkercapital.com. 

Products July 12, 2010

Virtus Launches New AlphaSector Fund

Virtus Investment Partners has launched the Virtus Premium AlphaSector Fund (Class A: VAPAX), an extension of Virtus' AlphaSector product suite that is subadvised by quantitatively-based investment firm F-Squared Investments, Inc. 

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According to a press release, similar to the Virtus AlphaSector Allocation Fund  (Class A: PSWAX) and the AlphaSector Rotation Fund (Class A: PWBAX), the Virtus Premium AlphaSector Fund is constructed exclusively from the nine Select Sector SPDR exchange-traded funds plus a short-term Treasury ETF.  The principal distinction between the strategies is that the Premium AlphaSector Fund has the ability to reallocate weekly, rather than monthly.  

The Premium AlphaSector Fund’s weekly reallocation signals are generated by F-Squared’s proprietary quantitative model that identifies which sector(s) may weigh down future performance. Those sectors are then omitted from the portfolio and the assets are allocated equally to the remaining sectors.  When three or fewer sectors are represented, the portfolio will begin building a position in cash equivalents, up to 100% of the portfolio.  

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“Financial advisers recognize that our AlphaSector strategies provide clients what they are looking for in a post-2008 investment era – the flexibility to allocate to cash in downward trending markets while remaining invested in upward trending markets,” said Frank Waltman, Virtus’ executive vice president, product management, in the press release. “The Premium AlphaSector Fund offers advisers a way to better manage the impact of down markets which, in turn, increases the likelihood their clients can achieve their retirement or investment goals.”  

More information is available at http://www.virtus.com. 

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