SciVest Capital Management Inc.PARA_BREAK_SENTINEL_9f8e7d6c

SciVest Capital Management Inc. has launched of the SciVest Net Short Equity Fund designed to provide a unique tool for managing market risk.

Preliminary research suggests that the current offering of net short funds is primarily focused on either shorting distressed securities or writing put options to generate income. Neither strategy is specifically designed to reduce the beta of a portfolio.

The same study found that most long-short hedge funds have a long bias.  Hence, holders of this type of investment incur significant market risk. Up until now, the only truly effective way to reduce this risk has been by shorting the relevant index.  However, this method fails to create alpha.

The SciVest Net Short Equity Fund takes a different approach.  Using the same quantitative engine used to run SciVest's award winning market neutral equity fund, the SciVest Net Short Equity Fund turns the exposure 'dials' such that the Fund's forecasted beta and net cash exposures will be tuned to deliver a fixed beta of negative 0.5. 

SciVest's success is a result of its approach, remaining true to its risk management principles of strictly defined limits, diversification of holdings, limiting concentrations in economic sectors and industries, avoidance of liquidity traps as well as controlling market exposure.

The SciVest Net Short Equity Fund commenced operations on July 9, 2004 and is currently open to new investment.

SciVest was recently awarded the Top Performing Emerging and Mid-Stage Equity Market Neutral Manager globally for 2003 by GAIM.  The award is based on returns posted to the Tremont TASS database.

With over USD 170 million of assets under management, SciVest focuses exclusively on managing quantitative portfolios.