Fidelity Investments has launched its first multi-asset income fund, designed to meet the growing demand among American investors for income. Fidelity Advisor Multi-Asset Income Fund (classes A, C, T and I) is available only through financial advisors.
Fidelity Advisor Multi-Asset Income Fund (Class A: FWATX) is an income-oriented strategy that seeks to provide a combination of income and capital appreciation. A flexible mandate allows the managers to invest across the entire spectrum of income-producing securities, including investment-grade bonds, non-investment-grade bonds, and dividend-paying equities. The fund’s benchmark index is the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index. It also has a secondary composite benchmark, 50% S&P 500 Index/50% Barclays Aggregate Bond Index1.
“In today’s low-yield environment, many advisors are looking beyond traditional bond categories to find income. However, stretching for yield can increase risk,” says Scott E Couto (pictured), president of Fidelity Financial Advisor Solutions. “Our new fund can help advisors and their clients balance income potential and risk, because it has the flexibility to invest where the best income opportunities exist — regardless of asset class, sector, or geography.”
Fidelity Advisor Multi-Asset Income Fund brings Fidelity’s experts in income investing together in a single fund. Adam Kramer – who has 15 years of investment experience and manages high-yield, convertible, and preferred securities assets – is the lead manager. He will work closely with two co-managers, Ford O’Neil and Jim Morrow. O’Neil joined Fidelity in 1990 and has been managing retail and institutional bond portfolios for more than 20 years. Morrow joined Fidelity in 1999 and has managed equity and equity-income portfolios for nearly 15 years. As lead manager, Kramer is responsible for the asset allocation and security selection of the portfolio. He will utilsze the best ideas of the high-income research team, in addition to the best investment-grade ideas identified by O’Neil and the best equity ideas identified by Morrow.
In addition, Kramer manages Fidelity Tactical High Income Fund, a multi-asset income strategy offered to the Canadian marketplace.
Fidelity Advisor Multi-Asset Income Fund has the flexibility to seek out the best income opportunities across asset classes. This flexibility may allow the fund to adapt to market conditions – the fund has the potential to capture gains in rising markets and mitigating losses in declining markets, although there is no guarantee that it will achieve these results.
According to lead manager Kramer, in seeking to achieve the fund’s investment objective, there are four primary goals in managing the fund: 1) Provide a high level of current income; 2) Provide capital preservation in declining markets; 3) Provide capital appreciation in rising markets; and 4) Add alpha through both asset class and security selection. Click here to watch a short video of Kramer discussing his four goals.
“Each year, all of the major income-oriented asset classes essentially take turns as the top total return performer and, in any given year, there’s a wide dispersion of returns across asset classes — sometimes as high as 50 per cent,” says Kramer. “This means that single asset class investors or those investors utilising traditional 50/50 balanced portfolios may not be capturing these additional alpha opportunities on a yearly and consistent basis. The fund’s flexibility allows me to quickly adjust the risk profile of the fund if I see changes on the horizon.”
Conservative asset allocation strategies that combine equities for capital appreciation and fixed income securities for income and stability are attracting investor assets. To help advisors looking to add a multi-asset income strategy to their client portfolios, Fidelity just released a Thought Leadership paper “Multi-Asset Income Investing”, which outlines important elements to consider when choosing a multi-asset income fund, including investment flexibility, tactical management, and risk management.
“While the Fidelity Advisor Multi-Asset Income Fund is designed to be a multi-asset income option for investors seeking income and capital appreciation, it can also complement an existing portfolio by helping to enhance the yield of fixed-income allocations, or by reducing the volatility of equity allocations,” says Couto.
