Description

The fund follows an index that invests in long low-beta stocks and short high-beta names. The underlying index 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 fully offset nominal long and short positions. QBLT ranks stocks in each sector by beta and individual stocks get equal weight within their sectors. Overall, long low beta, short high beta might be expected to produce negative correlation to equities despite the equal dollar offsetting exposure. While QBLT uses swaps at times, it typically takes direct short positions in stocks, rather than relying solely on derivatives for short exposure. The fund therefore incurs short interest costs, something that purely swaps based long-short funds don’t have to deal with. Also, the cost of a true market neutral exposure is something that investors should watch out for – with borrowing costs and dividends working against the fund.