About
Equinox Commodity Strategy Fund
A market neutral commodity fund with a 6% volatility target.
Summary:
- A mutual fund designed to produce returns by exploiting potential inefficiencies in the systematic selling and repurchasing of expiring futures contracts commonly employed by several long-only commodity strategies.
- The Fund applies a long/short (often called "market neutral") strategy in an attempt to reduce the impact of market movements.
- The Fund is designed to maintain volatility – as measured by standard deviation – at or around 6% per year.
- The Fund seeks to achieve its objective by tracking the performance of the SGI Smart Market Neutral Commodity IndexSM (the "Reference Index").* Bloomberg Ticker: SGICVMX <Index>.
* SGI Smart Market Neutral Commodity IndexSM – Index inception date July 23, 2009. (Bloomberg Ticker: SGICVMX <Index>.)
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Challenges in Commodity Investing »
Background:
- Funds/investors often utilize commodities to diversify a portfolio due to their historically low correlation to traditional holdings.
- Rather than hold the physical commodity, funds/investors typically buy futures contracts to gain commodity exposure.
Three Common Challenges:
- Volatility: Commodites have historically exhibited high volatility.
- Correlation: Correlation between equities and long-only commodity funds has increased over the past decade.
- Tracking Error: As futures contracts expire, funds sell and repurchase the position in order to maintain exposure. This is called "rolling." Inefficiencies in the rolling of these contracts cause a tracking error between a fund and the spot price of the commodity.
The Opportunity »
Funds and/or investors typically do not buy and hold physical commodities to gain commodity exposure; instead, they buy futures contracts. Periodically, throughout the year, long-only commodity strategies may include the sale of soon-to-expire futures contracts, and repurchase (or "roll") into the next nearby futures contracts. The potential inefficiencies created by these programmatic rolls offer an opportunity, which the Fund seeks to exploit. The SGI Smart Market Neutral Commodity IndexSM utilizes several systematic processes to optimize returns when futures contracts roll. The Fund also seeks to remain market neutral with respect to commodity price changes. The Fund is designed to maintain volatility to at or below 6% per year. (The Fund may or may not achieve this objective.)