Abria Alternative Investments has created a new fund offering individual investors the chance to participate in a widely available, controlled leverage, alternative product with an established five-year track record.

The Abria XL Trust is an exciting opportunity for the individual Canadian investor, according to Henry Kneis, Abria’s CEO and chief investment officer. The fund is an enhanced version of the Abria Diversified Arbitrage Trust, ranked the number one Risk-Adjusted Alternative Strategy Fund in Canada.

For the last two years, Paterson & Associates of Toronto have ranked the flagship Abria Diversified Arbitrage Trust the number one risk- adjusted Alternative Strategy Fund in Canada. The Abria Diversified Arbitrage Trust also received the inaugural 2004 Canadian Investment Award for the Best Fund of Hedge Funds.

Abria says the new XL Trust has all the proven benefits of the Abria Diversified Arbitrage Trust. Its market neutral investment strategy, maintaining low correlation to equity and bond markets, keeps volatility low. The fund’s tax structure is uniquely beneficial, with no annual distribution for tax purposes, and at disposition, returns are treated as a capital gain, letting investors keep more of what they make.

“We’ve introduced leverage to the fund,” explains Kneis, “in order to provide equity-like returns in the 7% to 11% range, while maintaining a level of risk consistent with that of long-term bonds or roughly one-half that of equities. With most analysts and forecasters predicting very modest returns from the equities markets over the next 10 years, it makes a lot of sense for investors to have an alternative strategy available to them. I’m moving my money to the XL Trust.”

Kneis, whose track record dates to 1987, has had positive returns for every low volatility portfolio he has traded, managed or supervised in every year of its existence. Even when global capital markets were down — October 1987, early 1994, August to October 1998, September 2001 — his portfolios have had positive returns.


http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/August2005/08/c7954.html