MutualFundWire.com: Wholesaling Hired-Guns Help Birth a Fund Family

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Monday, August 4, 2014

Wholesaling Hired-Guns Help Birth a Fund Family

You ever wonder what would have happened if Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen stayed in the town they saved in the film The Magnificent Seven?

Here's a real life story of guns-for-hire doing something a little unexpected.

There is a firm called Multi-Funds, consisting of roughly 20 or so wholesalers, that distributes for a number of fund sponsor clients. They've done pretty well, and continue to grow.

Now, instead of just being guns-for-hire, they've entered into an equity incentive agreement with burgeoning fund firm AlphaCentric Advisors -- sort of like the gunfighters partnering with the farmers.

On July 31st, the adventure began when AlphaCentric launched its family of funds, dubbed more or less eponymously as the AlphaCentric Funds.

AlphaCentric CIO Mike Schoonover described the new funds in this way:

We are launching two distinctive, alpha-driven mutual funds. The Smart Money Fund (SMRTX) is a long-only equity fund that implements an alpha-driven investment process focusing on U.S. companies of any market capitalization experiencing Smart Money activity, including insider buying, activist investor activity and corporate events such as share repurchases or spin-offs. The Asset Rotation Fund (ROTAX) seeks superior risk-adjusted returns with limited drawdown relative to equities by tactically investing in the global asset class ETFs experiencing the most strength each month.

The funds are sub-advised. Schoonover said that Gordon Nelson and Tyler Vanderbeek manage the Asset Rotation Fund, while David Miller manages the Smart Money Fund.

This is just the beginning, according to Schoonover:

We hope to launch more funds that meet our alpha-driven, “future of investing” model. We believe there are plenty of best-in-class investment strategies that we can make available in mutual fund format to financial advisors and their clients.

We are open to sub-advisor relationships and in-house managers. What is most important to us is how the product fits in with our overall fund family objective.

The funds are now available on Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Oppenheimer and Pershing.

Schoonover said that the AlphaCentric Funds are part of the Mutual Fund Series Trust, and are distributed by Northern Lights Distributors.

Printed from: MFWire.com/story.asp?s=49327

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