The mutual fund that helped launch the liquid alternatives product category, IndexIQ’s IQ Alpha Hedge Strategy Fund, is celebrating its sixth anniversary.

The fund was the first no-load, open-end hedge fund replication mutual fund.
 
“The launch of the IQ Alpha Hedge Strategy Fund was a key moment for us in the development and evolution of our firm, as well as for what was then the nascent ‘liquid alternatives’ product category,” says Adam Patti, chief executive officer at IndexIQ. “In the ensuing six years, financial advisors, retail investors, and institutions have all come to embrace liquid alternatives, and the diversification, liquidity, and other desirable characteristics that these products can add to an investment portfolio.”
 
Designed as a core holding for investors, the IQ Alpha Hedge Strategy Fund provides broad market exposure and is designed to solve for the structural limitations inherent in traditional hedge funds, such as their high cost, illiquidity and lack of transparency.
 
The fund is designed to synthesise the risk and return profiles of a broad range of hedge fund investing strategies, seeking to deliver hedge fund-like performance in a low cost, transparent, and highly liquid investment vehicle. It follows a rules-based investment process that selects components from a wide array of exchange-traded funds that cover commodities, currencies, stocks, bonds and real estate.