Investment Style
The Aston/Smart Allocation ETF Fund is structured as a fund-of-funds. A fund-of-funds invests principally in other investment companies. The Fund seeks to provide long term capital appreciation.
Objective
The Fund pursues its objective by investing primarily in exchange-traded funds ("ETFs") that represent a variety of asset classes and investment styles. Under normal circumstances, the Fund invests at least 80% of its assets in shares of ETFs. An ETF is an investment company that seeks to track the performance of an index (before fees and expenses) by holding in its portfolio either the securities that comprise the index or a representative sample of the securities in the index. ETFs offer investment in a wide variety of asset classes, including: large-cap, mid-cap, small-cap, equity, international, commodities, real estate, fixed income, derivatives and currency. As new ETF products become available, the asset classes available to the Fund will expand. The portfolio managers use quantitative and qualitative fundamental analysis to select securities from the available universe of ETFs traded in U.S. markets. The portfolio is constructed by applying a proprietary mathematical investment process to select a portfolio of ETFs in a more efficient combination than the Fund's composite market benchmark. The goal of the proprietary mathematical process is to create an optimal portfolio that is designed to produce returns in excess of its market benchmark with an equal or lesser amount of risk.
Because the Fund places primary emphasis on capital appreciation, the Fund expects to allocate a significant portion of its assets to underlying funds that emphasize stocks and to allocate a lesser proportion of its assets to underlying funds that emphasize bonds. The fund may invest without limit in cash, cash equivalents and money market instruments when favorable investment opportunities are not available.
To manage risk, the portfolio managers use proprietary risk management tools. The Fund's annual portfolio turnover rate is not expected to exceed 150%.
| Fund Overview |
| Inception Date |
1/10/2008 |
| Ticker |
ASENX |
| Cusip |
00080Y769 |
| Load |
None |
| Fund Statistics (as of
3/31/2008) |
|
|
$2,113,237.38 |
| Expense Ratio |
1.47% |
| Minimum Investment |
$2,500 |
|
|
| Sector Breakdown (as of
3/31/2008) |
| Domestic Fixed Income |
40.15% |
| Domestic Equity |
33.46% |
| Cash Equivalents & Other |
18.00% |
| Global Equity |
6.80% |
| Domestic Alternative |
1.59% |
Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investment return and principal value of mutual funds will vary with market conditions, so that shares, when redeemed, may be worth more or less than their original cost.
ETF Risk:The Fund invests in ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) which are securities of other investment companies. An ETF seeks to track the performance of an index by holding all or a representative sampling of the securities that represent an index. An ETF may not be able to replicate an index exactly since returns may be reduced by transaction costs, expenses and other factors while the index has none. Investing in the Fund may result in higher costs than if investing directly in ETFs or mutual funds that invest directly in stocks and bonds.
Small and Mid-Cap Company Risk: Investing in ETFs that own securities of small and mid-cap companies may involve greater risks than investing in securities of larger, more established issuers.