New York (HedgeCo.net) – Market-neutral hedge fund management firm, AQR Capital Management (AQR), announced the launch of AQR Risk Parity Fund, the newest addition to its mutual fund family.
The new no-load mutual fund, open to retail and institutional investors, began operations on October 1, 2010 with a $10 million investment by AQR. The fund’s investment objective is to seek consistent total returns with reduced equity market exposure by means of a risk parity asset allocation strategy.
“We believe it provides more meaningful diversification and consistent returns over time than traditional approaches, a portfolio that is more robust in different economic environments, and an opportunity to improve the risk/return characteristics of an overall portfolio through enhanced returns and reduced risks,” David G. Kabiller, CFA, Founding Principal and Head of Client Strategies at AQR, said.
Risk parity strategies may provide improved risk diversification by investing across a broad range of assets to ensure no single asset class dominates the portfolio’s expected performance. The asset allocation is driven by forecasting risk and by increasing exposure to less volatile assets, such as bonds and credit, while decreasing exposure to higher volatility assets such as stocks and commodities. The Fund utilizes futures contracts and related instruments to achieve its objectives.
AQR’s Risk Parity Fund uses a risk budgeting approach to combine a large number of liquid assets into a diversified portfolio, aiming to provide more consistent positive total returns. The fund gives investors access to a broad range of global capital markets, representing over 70 individual exposures across many asset classes using liquid, cost effective instruments to maximize diversification. The strategy seeks to offer investors exposure to a number of global equity, fixed income, commodity, currency, and credit markets.
The firm’s founding principals, Clifford S. Asness, Ph.D., David G. Kabiller, CFA, Robert J. Krail, and John M. Liew, Ph.D., along with several colleagues, founded AQR in 1998. Each of the firm’s principals was formerly at Goldman Sachs, & Co., where Asness, Krail, and Liew comprised the senior management of the Quantitative Research Group at Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
AQR manages approximately $29 billion in assets as of Sept 2010, primarily for institutional investors such as pensions and endowments. The firm offers a broad range of products that include aggressive high volatility market-neutral hedge funds, as well as low volatility benchmark driven traditional products. AQR Funds were created to provide mutual fund investors with access to these alternative and innovative strategies.
Editing by Alex Akesson
For HedgeCo.net
alex@hedgeco.net
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