Franklin Templeton has launched the Franklin K2 ActusRay European Alpha UCITS Fund, the latest addition to its Luxembourg-domiciled Franklin Templeton Alternatives Funds 2 range.

Franklin Templeton has launched the Franklin K2 ActusRay European Alpha UCITS Fund, the latest addition to its Luxembourg-domiciled Franklin Templeton Alternatives Funds (FTAF) 2 range. 

This new fund is registered for distribution in Spain, Germany and France. It will also be registered in the UK and Switzerland in the coming weeks.

Executing a market neutral long-short equity strategy, which takes long positions in stocks expected to appreciate and short positions in stocks expected to decline, the fund seeks to achieve capital appreciation with low to negative correlation to European equity markets by investing in a diversified portfolio of primarily listed European equity and equity-related securities of companies of any market capitalisation across different sectors from countries within the pan-European time zone. The fund’s investable universe ranges as far as the UK in the west, to Turkey to the east, the Nordics in the north and South Africa in the south.

By deploying a quantitative model with a discretionary overlay to correct the ‘blind spots’ of a pure systematic investment process, the Franklin K2 ActusRay European Alpha UCITS Fund aims to minimise exposure to risk factors and maximise diversification through a larger number of stocks with a balanced portfolio of roughly 400 longs and 400 shorts.