Liquid Alternatives: Getting the Mix Right

Investors should consider carefully information contained in the prospectus or, if available, the summary prospectus, including investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Please read it carefully before investing.

The information provided here is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered an individualized recommendation or personalized investment advice. The investment strategies mentioned here may not be suitable for everyone. Each investor needs to review an investment strategy for his or her own particular situation before making any investment decision.

All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice in reaction to shifting market conditions. Data contained herein from third-party providers is obtained from what are considered reliable sources. However, its accuracy, completeness or reliability cannot be guaranteed.

Examples provided are for illustrative purposes only and not intended to be reflective of results you can expect to achieve.

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss.

Alternative investments, including funds that invest in alternative investments, are risky and may not be suitable for all investors. An investment in any offering made available through any third-party platform is speculative and involves a high degree of risk. Investors may lose all or a substantial portion of their investment. Alternative investment often employ leverage and other speculative practices that increase an investor's risk of loss, often charge high fees, may require investors to satisfy capital calls, and can be highly illiquid and volatile. These investments may lack diversification, involve complex tax structures and have delays in reporting tax information.

Digital  currencies, such as bitcoin, are highly volatile and not backed by any central bank or government. Digital currencies lack many of the regulations and consumer protections that legal-tender currencies and regulated securities have. Due to the high level of risk, investors should view Bitcoin as a purely speculative instrument.

Currencies are speculative, very volatile, and not suitable for all investors.

Options carry a high level of risk and are not suitable for all investors. Certain requirements must be met to trade options through Schwab. Please read the options disclosure document titled "Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options." Supporting documentation for any claims or statistical information is available upon request.

Hedging and protective strategies generally involve additional costs and do not assure a profit or guarantee against loss. With long options, investors may lose 100% of funds invested. Spread trading must be done in a margin account. Multiple leg options strategies will involve multiple transaction costs.

Fixed income securities are subject to increased loss of principal during periods of rising interest rates. Fixed-income investments are subject to various other risks including changes in credit quality, market valuations, liquidity, prepayments, early redemption, corporate events, tax ramifications and other factors.

International investments are subject to additional risks such as currency fluctuation, geopolitical risk and the potential for illiquid markets.

Fund categories:

Digital Assets: Digital assets that utilize blockchain technology can be described as an immutable, permissionless and often decentralized digital database. Digital asset portfolios will invest the majority of their assets into one or more broadly classified areas including: Decentralized Finance (DeFi) assets, stable coins, currency assets, smart contracts platforms, exchange assets, privacy assets, yield farming, and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) among others. Digital assets are often characterized by two risk style factors: momentum and volatility. Portfolios may gain access to digital assets through physical or derivative exposures and incorporate both long-only investments and other hedging techniques. To qualify for inclusion, funds in this category must have a material portion of risk coming from digital assets.

Equity Market Neutral: Equity-market-neutral strategies attempt to profit from long and short stock selection decisions while minimizing systematic risk created by exposure to factors such as overall equity market beta, sectors, market-cap ranges, investment styles, or countries. They try to achieve this by matching long positions within each area against offsetting short positions, though they may vary their exposure to market risk factors modestly. These funds' investment strategies may be discretionary or systematic, and they keep at least 75% of their gross assets in equities or equity-related instruments such as derivatives. They typically have beta values to a relevant benchmark of less than 0.3. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility in relation to the overall market. By definition, the market, such as the S&P 500 Index, has a beta of 1.0, and individual stocks are ranked according to how much they deviate from the market. A stock that swings more than the market over time has a beta above 1.0.

Event Driven: Event-driven strategies attempt to profit when security prices change in response to certain corporate actions, such as bankruptcies, mergers and acquisitions, emergence from bankruptcy, shifts in corporate strategy, and other atypical events. Activist shareholder and distressed investment strategies also fall into this category. These portfolios typically focus on equity securities but can invest across the capital structure. They typically have low to moderate equity market sensitivity since company-specific developments tend to drive security prices.

Macro Trading: Macro-trading strategies, using either systematic or discretionary methods, look for investment opportunities by studying such factors as the global economy, government policies, interest rates, inflation, and market trends. As opportunists, these funds are not restricted by asset class and may invest across such disparate assets as global equities, bonds, currencies, and commodities, and make extensive use of derivatives. Although these strategies aim to provide returns that are not correlated to traditional market indexes over a full market cycle, they can take significant directional long or short positions on any asset class over short periods and may have relatively high portfolio turnover.

Multi-strategy: Multi-strategy portfolios offer investors exposure to two or more alternative investment strategies, as defined by Morningstar's alternative category classifications, through either a single-manager or multi-manager approach. Funds in this category typically have a majority of their assets exposed to alternative strategies, but at a minimum, alternatives must comprise greater than 30% of the strategy's gross exposure. The category includes funds with static allocations to alternative strategies as well as those that tactically adjust their exposure to different alternative strategies and asset classes. Multi-strategy funds typically aim to have low to modest sensitivity to traditional market indexes, although that may not be the case for strategies with lower alternatives allocations.

Options Trading: Options trading strategies use a variety of options trades, including put writing, options spreads, options-based hedged equity, and collar strategies, among others. In addition, strategies in this group that engage in option writing may seek to generate a portion of their returns, either indirectly or directly, from the volatility risk premium associated with options trading strategies. Funds in the category will typically have beta values to relevant benchmarks of less than 0.6.

Systematic Trend: Systematic trend strategies primarily implement trend-following, price-momentum strategies by trading long and short liquid global futures, options, swaps, and foreign exchange contracts. The remaining exposure may be invested in a mix of other complementary nontraditional risk premia. These portfolios typically obtain exposure referencing a mix of diversified global markets, including commodities, currencies, government bonds, interest rates and equity indexes.

Derivative Income: Derivative income strategies primarily use an options overlay to generate income while maintaining significant exposure to equity market risk. Income is typically generated through covered call writing strategies, for example, while traditional equity risk factors dictate a substantial portion of the return. Funds in the category will typically have beta values to relevant benchmarks of between 0.6 and 0.9.

Long-Short Equity: Long-short equity portfolios hold sizeable stakes in both long and short positions in equities, exchange traded funds, and related derivatives. Some funds that fall into this category will shift their exposure to long and short positions depending on their macro outlook or the opportunities they uncover through bottom-up research. At least 75% of the assets are in equity securities or derivatives, and funds in the category will typically have beta values to relevant benchmarks of between 0.3 and 0.8.

Global Allocation: Global-allocation portfolios seek to provide both capital appreciation and income by investing in three major areas: stocks, bonds, and cash. While these portfolios do explore the whole world, most of them focus on the U.S., Canada, Japan, and the larger markets in Europe. It is rare for such portfolios to invest more than 10% of their assets in emerging markets. These portfolios typically have at least 10% of assets in bonds, less than 70% of assets in stocks, and at least 40% of assets in non-U.S. stocks or bonds.

Tactical Allocation: Tactical Allocation portfolios seek to provide capital appreciation and income by actively shifting allocations across investments. These portfolios have material shifts across equity regions, and bond sectors on a frequent basis. To qualify for the tactical allocation category, the fund must have minimum exposures of 10% in bonds and 20% in equity. Next, the fund must historically demonstrate material shifts in sector or regional allocations either through a gradual shift during three years or through a series of material shifts on a quarterly basis. Within a three-year period, typically the average quarterly changes between equity regions and bond sectors exceeds 15% or the difference between the maximum and minimum exposure to a single equity region or bond sector exceeds 50%.

Nontraditional Bond: Inclusion in nontraditional bond is informed by a balance of factors determined by Morningstar analysts. Those typically include a mix of: absolute return mandates; goals of producing returns not correlated with the overall bond market; performance benchmarks based on ultrashort-term interest rates such as T-bills; the ability to take long and short market and security-level positions using a broad range of derivatives; and few or very limited portfolio constraints on exposure to credit, sectors, currency, or interest-rate sensitivity. Funds in this group typically have the flexibility to manage duration exposure over a wide range of years and to take it to zero or a negative value.

Trading – Miscellaneous: These funds seek to generate returns equal to a fixed multiple (positive or negative) of short-term returns of an index. The reference index for this category is not equity, fixed-income, or commodity linked. The compounding of short-term returns results in performance that does not correspond to those of investing in the index with external leverage. For example, a fund attempting to achieve 2 times the returns of a given index on a daily basis is unlikely to deliver anything like 2 times the index's returns over periods longer than one day. Many of these funds seek to generate a multiple of the daily or weekly return of the reference index. Trading funds are not considered suitable for a long-term investor and are designed to be used by active traders.