Prudential Investments has launched the Prudential Long-Short Equity Fund, available for the US market. The fund uses long and short positions within the full spectrum of U.S. equity market capitalization. The fund’s managers seek to add value by selecting attractive long positions, while having the flexibility to short sell securities they view as unfavorable. In addition, they can adjust the fund’s net long market exposure to take advantage of market conditions.
“With this new fund, our goal is to provide investors with growth potential from their equity investments, while seeking less volatile return patterns,” said Stuart Parker, president of Prudential Investments.
The fund is managed by a team from Quantitative Management Associates, including Peter Xu, Stacie Mintz and Devang Gambhirwala, who average 22 years of investment experience. With more than a decade of experience managing long-short equity portfolios, QMA has deep expertise in applying adaptive models to an array of investment and asset allocation strategies, including long-only, active extension, market neutral and alternatives strategies.
“In this fund, we are building on what we already do well,” said Stacie Mintz, a managing director and portfolio manager at QMA. “The strategy combines our active, bottom-up stock selection approach with insights from our asset allocation team to create a flexible portfolio designed to help investors in volatile markets.”
QMA, an asset management business of Prudential Financial, had more than $111 billion in assets under management as of March 31, 2014. The business manages equity and asset allocation portfolios for institutional pension plans, endowments, foundations, and subadvisory accounts for other financial services companies.