Industry Updates

UCITS fund based on Winton Capital's diversified program launched by Morgan Stanley

Thursday, February 07, 2013

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Opalesque Industry Update - Morgan Stanley announced the launch of a new fund under its FundLogic Alternatives plc umbrella. The fund, which provides exposure to the Winton Diversified Program, is the third in a series of four CTA strategies to be made available in a UCITS format through Morgan Stanley’s partnership with Equinox Fund Management LLC (“Equinox”), a U.S.-based multi-manager, specializing in constructing portfolios comprised of multiple Commodity Trading Advisor (“CTA”) programs. This latest addition expands Morgan Stanley’s offering of CTA strategies, which already comprises of a fully transparent and systematic strategy providing exposure to the broad class of managed futures and a short to medium-term pattern recognition program.

“We are proud to provide UCITS investors with access to the Winton Diversified Program, established in 1997 by David Harding”, said Alvise Munari, Managing Director and Global Head of Equity Derivatives, Sales and Financial Engineering at Morgan Stanley. He added: “Winton is one of the world’s leaders in systematic investment management with over $25bn of assets under management. David Harding’s track record of 25 years has been built on his scientific approach and sustained by a research team of over 100 and best in class practices. Winton’s investment process can be described as quantitative, systematic and research-driven; that seeks to identify explanatory variables that have some predictive power over future returns. This goal is achieved by pursuing a diversified trading scheme that does not rely upon favorable conditions in any particular market, nor on market direction. The investment universe mainly consists of futures contracts linked to stock indices, bonds, short-term interest rates, currencies, precious and base metals, grains, livestock, energy, and agricultural products.”

Michel Serieyssol, Managing Director at Equinox, commented: “We are delighted by the progress that our partner, Morgan Stanley, has made in providing international investors with access to best-in-class CTA strategies through state-of-the-art UCITS vehicles. Winton has been a longstanding friend of our firm and we are so pleased that its program is the latest addition to the FundLogic Alternatives Platform.”

David Harding, founder and president of Winton commented: “We are excited to work with Morgan Stanley and Equinox to provide their UCITS investors with exposure through Equinox to our trading strategy. Morgan Stanley offers investors extensive operational and risk management experience as well as the broad distribution network provided by its platform.”

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