Lyxor and Academy IM launch a systematic equity market neutral strategy

July 2, 2019

Lyxor Asset Management has partnered with Academy Investment Management, a New York based asset management firm, to launch the Lyxor / Academy Quantitative Global UCITS Fund (the “Fund”), a systematic market neutral strategy focused on global equity markets.

The Fund utilizes a proprietary statistical arbitrage strategy, trading both momentum and mean-reversion signals, to exploit short-term pricing anomalies in global equity markets through a universe of approximately 3,600 liquid large-cap and mid-cap stocks in 23 equity markets across Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia. The Fund seeks to take advantage of market inefficiencies through both traditional data such as price and volume and non-technical alternative data sets.  The Fund is managed market neutral, and is optimized to minimize sector, industry, country and liquidity risk.     

Founded in 2010 by Dr. Ellen Wang, Academy Investment Management manages approximately USD 650 million across multiple funds and is known for its ability to extract short-term alpha from less liquid markets. The firm is committed to investment strategy excellence that is based upon ongoing research and development as well as institutional quality infrastructure and operational practices.

The addition of this fund, the 12th on Lyxor’s Alternative UCITS platform, brings total AuM to USD 4.6 billion, making Lyxor’s the second largest Alternative UCITS platform globally**.

Nathanael Benzaken, Chief Client Officer at Lyxor Asset Management, comments: “Market neutral strategies have become increasingly popular as investors seek to access sources of diversification and uncorrelated returns to both traditional asset classes and hedge fund strategies. The addition of this strategy reflects our continued commitment to providing investors with innovative strategies in a liquid UCITS format.”

Dr. Ellen Wang, Founder and Chief Investment Officer at Academy Investment Management, comments: “Academy is excited to partner with Lyxor and expand its universe of investors. We believe we are uniquely positioned as a diversifying alternative that seeks to both protect from downside risk and also benefit from sustained upticks in market volatility.”

The Fund, an Irish registered UCITS product with daily liquidity, is now passported in 10 countries and is available for a minimum subscription of EUR 100,000 (Class I) and EUR 10,000 (class A). Not all share classes are available or registered for sale in all jurisdictions.