Acadian Asset Management Unveils New Market-Neutral Fund

Mark Shapland

9 December 2014

Boston-headquartered investment manager has launched a new fund.

The Global Leveraged Market Neutral UCITS fund is domiciled in Dublin and "will use leverage typically greater than twice the value of the underlying capital in order to amplify returns from stock selection - looking at a universe of more than 40,000 stocks," the firm said in a statement.

Acadian believes the equity markets are heading for a correction and that stocks are currently priced too high.

"Markets are at historic highs, which may indicate that a correction is likely in the near term. A market downturn or increased volatility would support the opportunity for active stock selection by increasing dispersion and potentially sending some fundamentally sound stocks to attractively priced levels. A market-neutral strategy is designed to be a diversifier in these circumstances, as we target zero correlation with global equity markets and seek to be neutral to market direction," said Alex Voitenok, senior vice president and director of long/short strategies at Acadian Asset Management.

Last month the firm launched a new small-cap fund. The Acadian Emerging Markets Small-Cap Equity UCITS USD is run in conjunction with Russell Investments Ireland and is also domiciled in Dublin. The fund is benchmarked to the MSCI Emerging Markets Small-Cap Index.