Envestnet Tamarac Introduces Quick Start Offering: Portfolio Products

Guggenheim announced a new Unit Investment Trust (UIT) that combines the benefits of owning individuals bonds with the diversification and professional supervision of bond mutual funds.

The new UIT — Advisory Series: Guggenheim Investment Grade Corporate Trust 3-7 Year, Series 1 — is specifically designed for fee-based advisory accounts. The Trust provides investors transparency, diversification and professional selection and supervision, at a unified competitive sales fee of 0.30% and a relatively low minimum investment.

Guggenheim notes that UITs have similar risks to those associated with individual bonds, which may include interest rate risk, credit risk, market risk, risk of default, and liquidity risk. The Advisory Series, like individual bonds, may also be affected by early call provisions.

AQR Launches Core Plus Fixed Income Mutual Fund

AQR Capital Management launched a systematic fixed income fund designed to provide investors with a differentiated approach to fixed income investing.

The Core Plus Bond Fund (QCPIX) systematically implements fundamental drivers of returns such as value, momentum, carry and defensive themes. It seeks to consistently outperform its benchmark, the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate Index, and generate excess returns that are uncorrelated to fixed income markets, other fixed income managers as well as equity markets.

The fund is invested in a portfolio of liquid instruments, balanced across the fixed income universe. The fund aims to generate returns through security selection within sectors, curve positioning, and currency selection, with minimal active duration or credit "bets." It strives to maintain a risk level consistent with its benchmark.

The fund is only distributed through financial advisors. The fund is offered in I shares, N shares and R6 shares.

DWS Expands Xtrackers Factor ETF Suite

DWS launched a new quality factor ETF: Xtrackers Russell 1000 US QARP ETF (QARP).

The fund seeks investment results that generally correspond to the performance of the underlying index that aims to identify companies that have strong quality scores relative to their peers, while also looking at the value scores of the securities to avoid those quality companies that are potentially over-priced. The quality focus also seeks to avoid "value traps" — companies with favorable valuation metrics as they approach bankruptcy, that a pure value exposure would likely fall into.

QARP, which stands for Quality at a Reasonable Price, seeks investment results that correspond generally to the performance, before fees and expenses, of the Russell 1000 2Qual/Val 5% Capped Index.

QARP has a net expense ratio of 19 basis points.

JLL Income Property Trust Announces Reductions in Fees

JLL Income Property Trust reduced the fees on two of its publicly available share classes.

Dealer manager fees on its Class A shares were reduced by 19%, from 1.05% to 0.85% of net asset value. Dealer manager fees on its Class M-I shares were eliminated completely, from 0.05% to zero percent of net asset value.

As dealer manager fees are deducted quarterly from dividends paid to stockholders, these reductions in share class specific expenses effectively result in a comparable 5.9% increase in any future dividends paid to Class A stockholders and a 1.1% increase for Class M-I stockholders.

These share class specific expense reductions, which were effective as of April 1, would first be reflected in JLL Income Property Trust's second quarter 2018 dividend declaration, subject to board approval, payable in August of 2018.