Top Portfolio Products: Star Manager Starts His Own Investment Firm

May 16, 2016 at 05:44 AM
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New products and changes introduced over the last week include the launch of a new investment firm by a former porfolio manager of the high-performing First Eagle Global Fund (SGENX), an Asian credit fund from Matthews Asia and a tactical asset allocation fund from VanEck and Ned Davis Research.

In addition Guggenheim Investments launched an optimized volatility ETF; IndexIQ introduced pair of fixed-income ETFs using a momentum approach; the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors allied with GuideVine on a digital marketing platform for advisors; and Alap and Naman Shah launched equity research platform Sentieo.

Here are the latest developments of interest to advisors:

1) Deshpande Launches Centerstone Investors LLC

Abhay Deshpande, a former portfolio manager at the five star Morningstar-rated First Eagle Global Fund, has started his own firm, Centerstone Investors LLC in New York. The asset management firm will initially offer two value-oriented strategies to retail and institutional investors.

The two risk-managed strategies are available in mutual fund and institutional separate account vehicles. They are the Centerstone Global Multiasset Strategy and Centerstone Investors Fund (CENTX), focused on investing in both U.S. domestic and foreign assets, and the Centerstone International Strategy and Centerstone International Fund (CINTX) focused on securities outside the U.S. 

2) Matthews Asia Launches Credit Opportunities Fund

Matthews Asia launched the Matthews Asia Credit Opportunities Fund (MCRDXMICPX), which is co-managed by Teresa Kong and Satya Patel, and seeks total return over the long term. It invests primarily in U.S. dollar-denominated high-yield bonds of Asian issuers.

3) VanEck, Ned Davis Research Launch Tactical Allocation Fund

VanEck and Ned Davis Research have teamed up to introduce the VanEck NDR Managed Allocation Fund (NDRMX), which has the flexibility to freely allocate among securities and cash.

NDRMX is an open-end mutual fund that seeks capital appreciation by allocating primarily to exchange-traded products (ETPs) that invest in domestic and foreign equities and U.S. debt securities and cash and cash equivalents.

4) Guggenheim Adds Optimized Volatility ETF

Guggenheim Investments launched the Guggenheim U.S. Large Cap Optimized Volatility ETF (OVLC) which tracks the Guggenheim U.S. Large Cap Optimized Volatility Index.

OVLC seeks to capture the benefits of low-volatility investing and adjust volatility exposure as market rallies dictate, with the potential to provide higher returns across a complete cycle.

5. IndexIQ Adds Two Momentum ETFs

IndexIQ launched the IQ Enhanced Core Bond U.S. ETF (AGGE) and IQ Enhanced Core Plus Bond U.S. ETF (AGGP), which take a momentum approach to fixed-income markets.

AGGE invests in sectors across the U.S. investment-grade fixed-income market, which includes Treasuries, investment grade corporate bonds and investment-grade mortgage-backed securities. AGGE's index weights each of the sectors within the investment grade market based on the total return momentum of each fixed-income sector, overweighting those sectors with high momentum and underweighting those with low momentum.

AGGP employs the same investment approach, providing exposures to Treasuries, U.S. investment-grade corporates and U.S. investment-grade mortgage-backed securities, with the ability to include exposure to U.S. high-yield debt and U.S. dollar-denominated debt of emerging market issuers.

6) NAPFA, GuideVine Team on Digital Marketing Platform for Advisors

NAPFA allied with GuideVine Technologies, Inc., which will serve as a digital marketing partner for financial advisors.

Among the features provided by the GuideVine platform are a digital marketing consulting review to strengthen an advisor's online profiles, and assistance from the GuideVine Advisor Success Team in developing messaging for videos and shooting the videos to be included with their profiles.

7) Shah Brothers  Launch Equity Research Platform Sentieo

Brothers Alap and Naman Shah have created equity research platform Sentieo, which provides financial analysts ways to search, visualize and interpret data.

Users can search SEC filings, transcripts, broker research and news to find key text and data; they can pull data via table extraction technology and highlight and annotate key text and figures.

All work performed on the platform pushes into the user's cloud-based Sentieo Notebook, which serves as a research management system (RMS) for organizing and collaborating on research content and is accessible from a user's desktop, iPad and iPhone apps, and via Sentieo's Excel plugin. Additional content can be pulled in via e-mail and Sentieo's browser extension webclipper, becoming instantly available in the notebook.

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