Aspect Capital (Aspect), the US$6.3bn systematic investment manager, is extending its alternative risk premia funds available to investors through yesterday’s launch of the Aspect Absolute Return Fund and the Aspect Core Trend High Volatility Fund.

The Aspect Absolute Return Programme is a systematic multi-risk premia strategy managed by Aspect’s managed futures research team. The Absolute Return Programme adopts a balanced set of allocations to a diversified range of 16 alternative risk premia strategies, trading in over 180 liquid futures markets and over 600 European equities.

These strategies benefit from Aspect’s 20 years of research experience to deliver enhanced exposure to a range of both well-known and less common risk premia factors. With a target annualised volatility range of 5-8%, the fund aims to deliver steady positive returns which are uncorrelated to traditional asset classes. The programme began live trading with proprietary capital in May 2016 and the fund, which launched earlier this month, is now open to investors.

Building on recent success raising assets into its single-factor pure momentum offering, the Aspect Core Diversified Programme (ACDP), Aspect is now launching a new Fund with higher volatility in response to investor demand.  The Aspect Core Trend High Volatility Fund is designed to give investors access to ACDP with a higher annualised volatility of approximately 15%.

The fund, which was recently seeded with external institutional capital, provides daily liquidity and aims to identify and capture directional price trends across a diversified range of 80-90 highly liquid financial and commodity futures and forwards markets. The markets are spread over four asset classes: commodities, currencies, fixed income and stock indices.

Anthony Todd, CEO of Aspect, said yesterday: “With compressed yields and stretched equity valuations, investors are increasingly looking for new and steady sources of returns as well as reliable sources of diversification. We are seeing increasing demand for risk premia investing, and these two different strategies have been designed to help address these needs. Both funds give investors access to a common theme: Aspect’s continuous research into and development of high quality, scientifically tested systematic models.

“For twenty years we have focused on medium-term trend following and the constant refinement of our models. We continue to develop our core strategy, and we now apply the same rigour to developing broader diversification opportunities for our clients and providing the most relevant option for their portfolio needs. Today’s announcement reflects our commitment to provide investors with high quality systematic strategies via a range of appropriate fund structures.”