SciVest Alternative Strategies Inc. today announced that it is broadening its product offering with the launch of five new funds.

The new funds are: SciVest Oil Sands Index PLUS Fund; SciVest Income Portfolio PLUS Fund; SciVest Commodity Index PLUS Fund; SciVest Asia Pacific Long-Short Equity Fund; and SciVest Aggressive Market Neutral Equity Fund.

“Essentially, we are realigning our Market Neutral franchise of funds, expanding our Beta-Controlled franchise of funds, and introducing our PLUS franchise of funds,” says John Schmitz, President and CEO of SciVest Capital Management Inc.

“Although Market Neutral will remain a core strategy, we believe that Beta Controlled funds are a useful investment tool in the current market environment allowing investors to run with either the bulls or bears in a risk controlled manner.”

“Our PLUS funds, on the other hand, use a sophisticated investment technique known as ‘portable alpha’ to provide investors with the opportunity to beat the relevant underlying long-only benchmark with no additional market risk – effectively combining the power and benefits of both indexing and pure active investment management,” adds Schmitz.

SciVest’s latest addition to its PLUS funds franchise, SciVest Oil Sands Index PLUS Fund, is the first and the only open-ended fund in Canada for investors to participate purely in the country’s oil sands sector. The fund uses an overlay strategy that links SciVest’s market neutral equity trading strategy to the Oil sands sector index developed by Calgary-based Sustainable Wealth Management. The index provides investors with a “pure play” to the high growth oil sands segment of the energy sector, thereby allowing it to potentially outperform the S&P/TSX energy index benchmark.

SciVest Income Portfolio PLUS Fund uses a similar overlay strategy that links a diversified, tax efficient income portfolio with SciVest’s market neutral equity trading strategy.

SciVest Commodity PLUS Fund, which competes with low-fee index funds, overlays SciVest’s market neutral equity trading on top of a basket of commodity indices, allowing investors to maintain full exposure to the physical commodity markets, while still having the ability to outperform such commodity indices.

SciVest Asia Pacific Long-Short Equity Fund uses a quantitative long-short strategy that is typically available to only institutional investors to invest in high-growth opportunities in Asia, with the aim of achieving incremental alpha with less risk than a long-only portfolio of Asian stocks.

SciVest Aggressive Market Neutral Equity Fund uses a greater amount of leverage than the SciVest Market Neutral Equity Fund to enhance returns while maintaining equity market like volatility risk, but with no equity market correlation.

These SciVest funds are managed by Schmitz, and his team of investment professionals. Schmitz, a pioneer of equity market neutral investing in Canada, is the founder of SciVest.