Three U.S. fund providers–Pioneer Investments, Ivy Funds and Nile Capital Management–recently announced new products.
Pioneer Investments added the Pioneer Multi-Asset Real Return Fund to its family of U.S. mutual funds on Wednesday, May 3. According to an announcement, the fund invests in a variety of global sectors and asset classes; these include Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS); both investment grade and high yield bonds; emerging market equity and bonds; U.S. equities; and select commodities.
The new fund's investment goal is total return, the firm said in the statement. In addition, the funds seeks "real return," defined as "a level of total return that exceeds the rate of inflation over a full market cycle," typically lasting six to eight years and including a market peak and a trough.
"This fund is not just designed to protect against a spike in inflation, but also against persistent low levels of inflation that erode purchasing power over long periods," Kenneth Taubes, one of three portfolio managers on the fund, said in the statement. "That's why we think this fund could be a fourth component of a typical portfolio that includes stocks, bonds and cash, with this fund substituting for hard assets or a typical TIPS fund or other vehicles used as an inflation hedge."
On May 3, Ivy Funds rolled out the Asset Strategy New Opportunities Fund. The new fund is a complement to the original Asset Strategy Fund, offering a "new go-anywhere, asset allocation product" that focuses on small and midcap companies in emerging and frontier markets around the world, the firm said in a statement. The flagship Asset Strategy Fund typically focuses on large-cap equities and in combination with the new fund may provide investors with broad global equity coverage, the statement said.
"The smaller cap range I'm covering in Asset Strategy New Opportunities Fund will lead to market sector weightings and country allocations which may not necessarily reflect those of the larger fund," said portfolio manager Jonas Krumplys. "I'll be pursuing similar global rebalancing themes, but will look at opportunities in additional geographies such as Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East."
