New products and changes introduced over the last week include a strategic commodity-focused fund from First Trust Advisors and a fund of ETFs from Innealta Capital; a robotics/automation index from ROBO-STOX; a new financial planning solution for advisors from SunGard; and a risk management platform from Axioma.
In addition, Aquila reorganized some of its funds into a more unified structure and engaged in other updating, and ProTracker announced a new cloud-based service.
Here are the latest developments of interest to advisors:
1) First Trust Offers Global Tactical Commodity Strategy Fund
First Trust Advisors L.P. announced the launch of First Trust Global Tactical Commodity Strategy Fund (FTGC). FTGC is an actively managed ETF that will seek to provide total return by providing investors with commodity exposure while seeking a relatively stable risk profile by investing up to 25% of its total assets in commodity futures contracts and exchange-traded commodity-linked instruments through a wholly owned subsidiary of the fund.
The rest of FTGC's assets will primarily be invested in short-term investment-grade fixed-income securities, money market instruments, ETFs and other investment companies, and cash and other cash equivalents.
Rob Guttschow and John Gambla are senior portfolio managers of the fund. The two will primarily be responsible for daily investment decisions under the direction of an investment committee that includes six other individuals with extensive investment experience.
2) Innealta Capital Announces New Fund of ETFs
Innealta Capital, a division of AFAM Capital, announced that it has launched a new mutual fund, the Innealta Risk Based Opportunity Moderate Fund (ROMAX). The fund's objective is to offer the opportunity for both long-term capital appreciation and income within a single strategy. It operates as a fund of funds and primarily invests in ETFs that are exposed to a variety of asset classes, including equities, fixed income, commodities, currencies and real estate.
The fund seeks to invest in leveraged ETFs in order to free up portfolio collateral, which can then be allocated to high-yield investments deemed by Innealta to possess attractive risk/reward tradeoffs.
3) ROBO-STOX Launches Benchmark Index Tracking Robotics, Automation
ROBO-STOX LLC has announced its launch of the ROBO-STOXGlobal Robotics and Automation Index (ROBO), which tracks the robotics and automation space. The index consists of 77 domestic and foreign robotics and automation companies that meet listing criteria for the S&P DJI Global Broad Market Index.
Since pure-play robotics companies are extremely rare, ROBO-STOX evaluates companies across industries, objectives, geographic locations and market capitalizations to find innovative firms that can fuel productivity and economic growth for years to come.
The composite includes a mixture of "bellwether" stocks (securities of companies that the index committee believes reflect the performance of robotics and automation firms as a whole) and "non-bellwether" stocks (securities of robotics- and automation-related companies the index committee believes will generate higher revenue as their products and services grow).
The index is rebalanced on a quarterly basis, and is usually weighted 40% toward bellwether stocks and 60% toward non-bellwether stocks. Companies can be deleted from the index at any time at ROBO-STOX's discretion.
4) SunGard Launches Holistic Financial Planning Solution for Advisors
