AGF U.S. Market Neutral Anti-Beta Fund(AMEX:BTAL)

BTAL actively manages its portfolio of stocks through a market neutral strategy. The fund targets the top 1,000 by market-cap, including REITs, in the Dow Jones U.S. Index. The fund`s market neutral approach aims to offset nominal long and short positions. BTAL ranks stocks in each sector by beta, and individual stocks get equal weight within their sectors. Overall, long low beta and short high beta might be expected to negatively correlate to equities despite the equal dollar offsetting exposure. While BTAL uses swaps at times, it typically takes direct short positions in stocks rather than relying solely on derivatives for short exposure. Therefore, the fund reports short interest costs in its expense ratio, something that purely swaps-based long-short funds don`t have to do, although short interest expense hits the bottom line in either case. Prior to Feb. 14, 2022, the fund tracked the Dow Jones U.S. Thematic Market Neutral Low Beta Index following the same strategies.