J Zechner Associates Global Hedged Growth Fund

Objective of the Fund

The fund is designed to generate consistent, positive returns that are commensurate with a moderate degree of investment risk. The manager focuses on global indicators to make an assessment of macro-economic trends and then positions investments in Canadian and global stock, fixed income and commodity markets that are most impacted by those trends. The Fund is suitable for sophisticated investors who can tolerate a moderate degree of risk and volatility.

Investment Strategy

The Fund capitalizes on J Zechner Associates’ proven strength of top down economic and strategic investment analysis. The Fund provides exposure to major industry sectors throughout the world, but does not hold individual stocks. Rather, the Fund expands the universe of investment instruments by using sector and country index Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s) to simulate economic and market conditions. J Zechner Associates has, since its inception in 1993, been known as a firm which focuses on global economic indicators in addition to stock and sector valuation analysis to manage balanced and equity portfolios. By applying these valuation criteria the Manager has demonstrated a consistent ability to add value by finding opportunities within global industries, sectors and themes that have the strongest growth characteristics.

With the J Zechner Associates Global Hedged Growth Fund the Manager takes these strengths a step further by expanding the universe of investment instruments available on listed exchanges to be able to target more specifically the sector and asset allocation decisions and generate stronger returns from the Manager’s best investment ideas. The Manager can also use these same instruments to protect the portfolio by establishing short positions in sectors where their analysis shows downside risks due to the Manager’s analysis of traditional valuation measures, technical market trends or other pending risk issues. Sector short positions can also be used to protect the value of the portfolio in times of extreme market volatility as well as during market downturns.

The structure of the Fund allows the investor to benefit from the diverse strengths of the Manager’s investment expertise as well as helping to reduce volatility of the Fund and allow it to grow in all types of investment environments. The Fund is also unique among hedge funds in that it does not use any financial leverage to achieve these results.