Frost Investment Advisors has launched an innovative new fund, the Frost Diversified Strategies Fund (FDSFX), to provide investors access to alternative investment management strategies previously available to hedge and private equity fund investors.
FDSFX combines traditional and alternative investment strategies seeking to give investors the advantages of hedge and private equity funds paired with the transparency, daily pricing and liquidity seen in traditional mutual funds. The fund’s focus seeks asset preservation by reducing downside volatility while providing potentially attractive upside strategic investment opportunities.
"The Frost Diversified Strategies Fund is one of the first mutual funds to give individual investors access to a vehicle that acts similarly to a hedge or private equity fund," says Tom Stringfellow, CFA, president of Frost Investment Advisors. "The fund will incorporate many aspects of our Optimum asset allocation strategies along with investments in alternative assets, which should help reduce the downside risk of large market drawdowns, while providing potential upside opportunities. The fund will complement our other offerings."
The fund seeks to appreciate in an up market and outperform a down market to preserve assets. The prospectus calls for the FDSFX allocation to include 60 percent investment in traditional investment assets, including stocks, bonds, cash and listed options. The hedge replication module will comprise 30 to 40 per cent of the portfolio, using hedge beta strategies and hedge fund replication of indices, supported by publicly available products.
David Telling will serve as Lead Manager of FDSFX with co-managers Tom Stringfellow, CFA, Brad Thompson, CFA and Jeffery Elswick.
Frost Investment Advisors began offering mutual funds in April of 2008, initially to serve the needs of institutional clients, and expanding to offer retail shares in June 2008. With the addition of the Frost Diversified Strategies Fund, the first fund created by the advisor since 2008, the firm now provides investment advisory services to 14 mutual funds that include institutional and retail shares on approximately 200 platforms as of December 31, 2010.
