Ameriprise Launches Active Diversified Alternatives

Ameriprise Financial has introduced Active Diversified Alternatives Portfolios, a series of professionally managed portfolios designed for long-term investors seeking increased diversification and risk management.

Fund manager research and portfolio construction from Wilshire Funds Management is designed to enhance the offerings’ risk-adjusted performance by incorporating uncorrelated sources of return from funds that utilize alternative investment strategies, according to a news release.

An approach using six alternative investment trading strategies within a discretionary wrap account allows financial advisers to make recommendations from among six risk profiles and two tax treatments (tax-sensitive and tax-neutral), based on investors’ goals, risk tolerance, tax situation, resources and specific needs, the release said.

The risk profiles include conservative, moderate conservative, moderate, moderate aggressive, aggressive, and all equity. The corresponding alternative strategies are managed futures, global tactical asset allocation, equity market neutral, long/short equity, merger arbitrage, and convertible arbitrage.

The allocation to alternative strategies varies based on the risk profile selected. In general, each portfolio will have an allocation to alternatives ranging from 8% to 20% of the portfolio.

“As individual investors work with their financial advisers to define risk tolerance, they are increasingly focused on managing risk over the long term,” said Sarah McKenzie, senior vice president of Brokerage and Managed Products at Ameriprise Financial. “Active Diversified Alternatives Portfolios seeks to provide investors with consistency, diversification, and risk management through a sophisticated investment process that is easy to use.”

ETFs Gain Assets Overall; Leveraged ETFs Lose Assets

Exchange-traded fund (ETF) assets rose $47.4 billion, or 8%, in July, according to State Street Global Advisors (SSgA).

As of July 31, assets in the U.S. ETF industry totaled $640 billion. A total of 751 ETFs in were managed by 27 ETF managers, according to the SPDR ETF Snapshot for July 2009 from SSgA, a manager of ETFs.

Eleven of the 12 categories of ETFs gained assets. The International category saw the most inflows, rising the most in absolute and percentage terms, up $16.6 billion, or 12.6%.

Inverse/Leverage was the only category to lose assets, down $1.9 billion, according to the report. Leveraged ETFs have come under criticism by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for being unsuitable for retail investors. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney recently joined Edward Jones and UBS to stop the sale of the instruments (see “MSSB Bans Leveraged ETF Sales”).  

ETFs also gained assets across style/size and sector for the most part. By size/style, assets were up $19.4 billion, or 9.1%. Gains were spread evenly across categories with seven gaining in double-digit percentage terms.

Most of the 10 sectors saw asset gains, but Consumer Staples saw a decline. Assets are up 17.2% overall, with Materials seeing the largest year-to-date gain (69.2%). Other big asset percentage changes were seen in Consumer Discretionary (50.8%) and Technology (63.7%). 

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