Products June 22, 2009

InvestorForce Product Helps Consultants Share Data with Clients

InvestorForce, a Wayne, Pennsylvania, software provider, announced an update of its InvestorForce Insight service it said will allow consultants to provide institutional clients with daily access to critical portfolio data directly through a branded Web portal.
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According to a news release, the new offering’s level of transparency of information will help consultants and their plan sponsor clients make more timely decisions around asset allocation and the management of exposures through the online access to daily plan data, benchmarks, and analytics.

Using the new version of Insight, consultants and plan sponsors can collaborate, sharing the same information from their desktops, as well as performance reports and other documents that consultants can now offer to their clients through Insight’s Document Center feature, the company said.

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Other key new features include the plan performance summary, which provides a concise view of plan and manager performance at all plan levels and expanded asset allocation analytics.

With daily views of holdings, cash flows, transactions, and asset values, Insight will allow consultants and their plan sponsor clients to compare actual positions with allocation targets on a daily basis, including alternative investments.

Products June 22, 2009

Hedge Fund Morphs into Long-Short Mutual Fund

Bull Path Capital Management today announced the conversion of one of its long-short hedge funds into a long-short equity mutual fund, the Bull Path Long Short Fund (BPFCX).
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According to a news release, the fund ranks number one of 18 funds in the Lipper Long-Short Fund Universe for total annualized returns since inception on October 1, 2002, through March 31.

The Bull Path Long Short Fund adopts a strategy developed and run by Bull Path Capital Management since 2002. During that time, the company said, the strategy has consistently delivered returns above its benchmark by utilizing a fundamentally-driven, bottom-up investment process that does not employ leverage.

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Focused on U.S. mid-capitalization stocks, the strategy seeks out companies with recurring high margins, revenues or strong franchise positions while also favoring issues with strong barriers to entry and successful, entrepreneurial management teams. Stock selection is carried out by a team of sector-specific analysts, each of whom focus on covering no more than 25 companies in such industries as health care, media, telecommunications, financial services, energy services, restaurants and retail, the announcement said.

Stocks are subject to a proprietary risk scoring process and are typically monitored for months before positions are taken. Stringent bottom-up analysis also is conducted in establishing short positions, with emphasis placed on factors such as near-term operating conditions and other events that may impact the company.

“Investors have been traumatized by the events of the past 18 months, including the sobering performance of many long-only, ‘buy and hold’ strategies, and wondering how and when they can reenter the market,” said Rob Kaimowitz, portfolio manager of the fund and founder of Bull Path Capital Management, in the announcement. “We believe investors will be attracted to the performance characteristics of long-short funds which aim to capture the market’s upside while mitigating risk in a market sell-off.”

Kaimowitz said investors who may have previously considered long-short hedge funds should consider investing in this strategy through a mutual fund structure because of lower minimum investments, lower fees, full transparency and the assets being held in a trust bank.

The I-share class requires a minimum of $100,000 or a $50,000 minimum with participation in the automatic investment plan, the investment said.

More information is available at www.bullpathfunds.com.

 

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