Now Would Include Fixed Income Securities and Also Ability of Fund Advisors to Use Custom Baskets
NEW YORK, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Blue Tractor Group, LLC (“Blue Tractor”) is pleased to announce that it has filed an application for exemptive relief with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) that would materially broaden the investable universe available to active portfolio managers using Blue Tractor’s Shielded Alpha℠ exchange-traded fund (“ETF”) structure. Additionally, this latest application would permit the use of ‘custom’ creation baskets.
Blue Tractor’s Shielded Alpha℠ ETF structure is a ‘wrapper’ that facilitates management of actively managed portfolio strategies within an ETF rather than in a traditional mutual fund or separately managed account, thereby conferring the benefits of an ETF to advisors and investors alike, including lower cost, greater tax efficiency and intra-day liquidity. However, Blue Tractor’s proprietary structure fully obfuscates a portfolio manager’s alpha generation strategy and trading execution. Exemptive relief from the SEC permitting the Shielded Alpha℠ ETF wrapper was issued on December 10, 2019 and the structure is now available for license by third party fund advisors.
Currently, the investable universe for the Shielded Alpha℠ ETF wrapper includes domestic small, mid and large cap equity securities, ETFs and ETNs, exchange-traded preferred stock, futures, commodity pools, metal trusts, currency trusts, real estate investment trusts and American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), cash and cash equivalents and foreign equity securities from markets that trade contemporaneously with the U.S.
Blue Tractor’s new filing would expand the Shielded Alpha℠ investable universe to include domestic and foreign fixed income securities, currencies, derivative instruments, including options, and international securities from regions including, but not limited to, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia.
Commented Terry Norman, Founder of Blue Tractor, “The high degree of transparency inherent with the Blue Tractor ETF wrapper makes it ideally suited for use with fixed income and international equity securities.”
The new Blue Tractor filing would also permit the use of ‘custom’ creation baskets as promulgated in the recent SEC ETF Rule 6c-11 for fully transparent ETFs. The SEC has noted that ‘custom’ baskets may facilitate attractive flexibility and operational cost and tax efficiencies for fund advisors.
Commented Simon Goulet, Co-Founder of Blue Tractor, “Only the Blue Tractor wrapper currently offers advisors the ability to manage their ETF creation basket to lower trading costs, boost capital gains tax efficiency and obfuscate all trading execution when building or exiting positions. We believe that fully customizable creation baskets would be a natural extension of Blue Tractor’s existing exemptive relief and could deliver enhanced capabilities to advisors”.
Blue Tractor will be exhibiting at the Inside ETFs 2020 Conference in Hollywood, FL January 26 – 29, 2020 (Booth #112) and Terry Norman will be speaking in a main stage session at the Conference on Tuesday, January 28 at 9:05 a.m. Please contact Blue Tractor (simon@bluetractorgroup.com) to set up a time to meet at Inside ETFs.
Blue Tractor’s application for exemptive relief was filed January 2, 2020 and was prepared by Michael W. Mundt, Partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, LLP and is available for review on the SEC’s website through the EDGAR database at sec.gov and at bluetractorgroup.com.
About Blue Tractor Group
Blue Tractor Group, LLC develops proprietary solutions to facilitate novel exchange-traded fund products. Blue Tractor’s Shielded Alpha℠ ETF structure (patent pending) permits active fund management within an ETF wrapper, while fully obfuscating an advisor’s proprietary alpha strategy. The SEC permitted the exemptive relief for Blue Tractor’s ETF wrapper on December 10, 2019. More information is available at bluetractorgroup.com.
Contact:
Chris Sullivan
MacMillan Communications
(212) 473-4442
chris@macmillancom.com