AQR Capital Management, LLC, announced today the launch of AQR Multi-Strategy Alternative Fund (ASANX/ASAIX), the newest addition to its mutual fund family.
The new no-load mutual fund began operations on July 18, 2011 with a $20 million investment by AQR. The Fund's investment objective is to seek long-term positive absolute return through a broadly diversified portfolio of alternative strategies that are traditionally made available through hedge funds.
The Multi-Strategy Alternative Fund targets low correlation to traditional asset classes and seeks to provide exposure to nine different types of alternative strategies: Convertible Arbitrage, Event Driven (including Merger Arbitrage), Fixed Income Relative Value, Equity Market Neutral, Long/Short Equity, Dedicated Short Bias, Global Macro, Managed Futures and Emerging Markets.
"By providing investors with access to nine different alternative investment strategies," said David G. Kabiller, CFA, Founding Principal and Head of Client Strategies at AQR, "the AQR Multi-Strategy Alternative Fund attempts to provide a comprehensive solution to their alternative investment needs. In addition, by targeting low correlation to traditional asset classes, the Fund has the added benefit of potentially increasing investors' portfolio diversification."
"As of today, there are only a relatively small number of mutual funds that pursue a similar multi-strategy approach. With AQR's extensive experience in managing multi-strategy portfolios for institutional clients, we believe that AQR is perfectly poised to respond to a growing market need among mutual fund investors. The launch of the Multi-Strategy Alternative Fund reinforces AQR's commitment to introducing innovative mutual funds that may help individual investors to build more efficient and diversified portfolios."
Distributed through financial advisors only, the Multi-Strategy Alternative Fund is the ninth mutual fund launched by AQR. Since the launch of the first fund in January of 2009, the AQR Funds have grown to over $4.7 B as of June 30, 2011.
