Nomura has announced the launch of the Nomura Interest Rate Investment Strategy IRISx4 Fund. The fund, developed by Nomura Investment Solutions, aims to provide institutional investors with absolute returns by investing in interest rate markets.

The IRISx4 fund is the latest development in Nomura’s UCITS III compliant product suite. Its minvestment objective is to provide investors with four times leveraged exposure to the performance of the Nomura Interest Rate Investment Strategy.

IRIS is an interest-rate positioning index which dynamically adjusts in changing market and economic conditions using macro-economic and quantitative indicators. Developed by Nomura’s fixed income macro-quantitative research team, the index is highly diversified and consists of four trading strategies. It implements long or short positions across the interest rate curves of six markets using liquid fixed income instruments - money-markets futures, bond futures and interest rate swaps - through more than 40 trading positions.

Jean-Philippe Royer, head of the Fixed Income Fund Solutions Group at Nomura said: “Despite current market conditions, investors are still looking for absolute excess returns in the range of 7% to 8% over cash, but without the volatility that usually accompanies such high alpha. The IRISx4 fund was developed to respond to that demand."