FS Multi-Strategy Alternatives Fund

Data updated: 2022-05-27

C000177448 — FS Multi-Strategy Alternatives Fund. Money Market · $246.51M AUM · 2.16% expense ratio. Holdings, fees, performance and SEC filings.

C000177448 Fund Overview

FS Multi-Strategy Alternatives Fund is a US mutual fund managed by FS Series Trust, categorised as Money Market. ABC INVEST provides holdings, performance, costs, cashflows, risk data, prospectus documents and SEC filings, sourced from SEC filings.

Type: US mutual fund
Manager: FS Series Trust
Category: Money Market
Assets under management: $246.51M
1-year return: 7.6%
SEC CIK: 0001691167
SEC series ID: S000056292
Share class ID: C000177448

C000177448 Investment Objective and Strategy

FS Multi-Strategy Alternatives Fund describes its objective and strategy as follows, from its latest prospectus filed with the SEC by FS Series Trust.

Investment objective

FS Multi-Strategy Alternatives Fund (the Fund) seeks to provide shareholders with positive absolute returns over a complete market cycle.

Principal investment strategy

The Fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by actively allocating its assets across a broad spectrum of alternative investment strategies. The Fund will seek to provide exposure to alternative strategies with low correlation to equity and fixed income markets, which can enhance portfolio diversification. The strategy will be implemented through a rigorous quantitative and qualitative process intended to select high quality Underlying Managers and Alternative Beta Strategies (each as defined below). FS Fund Advisor, LLC (FS or the Adviser) typically allocates the assets of the Fund among a number of? (i) asset managers (the Underlying Managers) that directly manage a portion of Fund assets in alternative investment strategies, and (ii) alternative beta providers (Alternative Beta Providers) that offer the Fund exposure to the beta portion?-?or market-related portion?-?of the returns of particular investment strategies (Alternative Beta Strategies).

The Adviser may also manage all or a portion of the Fund's assets directly. The Underlying Managers are sub-advisers to the Fund. The Fund invests in Alternative Beta Strategies by entering into a total return swap (or similar instrument or other arrangement) with an Alternative Beta Provider, a financial institution. Alternative Beta Providers are swap (or similar instrument) counterparties, not sub-advisers. The strategies employed by the Underlying Managers and Alternative Beta Providers are collectively referred to in this Prospectus as Alternative Investment Strategies. The Adviser, with the assistance of the Fund's primary sub-adviser, Wilshire Associates Incorporated (Wilshire), determines the allocation of the Fund's assets. The Adviser is ultimately responsible for selecting the Alternative Investment Strategies, for identifying and retaining Underlying Managers with expertise in the selected strategies, and for determining the amount of Fund assets to allocate to each Alternative Investment Strategy.

The Adviser may adjust allocations from time to time among Alternative Investment Strategies based on its assessment of market conditions and/or other factors. The Adviser, from time to time, may also choose not to allocate to certain Alternative Investment Strategies and there may be lengthy periods of time when there is no allocation to particular Alternative Investment Strategies, Underlying Managers or other strategies described in this Prospectus. Each Underlying Manager is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Fund's assets that the Adviser allocates to it. The Adviser has entered into sub-advisory agreements with, and may allocate the Fund's assets to, the following Underlying Managers: Underlying Manager Strategy Basso Capital Management, L.P. (Basso Capital) Relative Value MidOcean Credit Fund Management, L.P.

(MidOcean Credit Partners) Event Driven The investment strategy for each Underlying Manager listed above is its principal investment strategy, but the Underlying Managers may also implement other investment strategies in the portion of assets assigned to them. As noted above, the Fund's primary sub-adviser, Wilshire, assists the Adviser by evaluating and recommending Alternative Investment Strategies to the Adviser for use by the Fund. In addition, Wilshire provides recommendations to the Adviser for allocating and reallocating Fund assets among the Underlying Managers and Alternative Beta Providers and may also provide the Adviser with advice on investment decisions and underlying positions. However, Wilshire does not have discretionary authority with respect to the investment of the Fund's assets.

In conjunction with recommending Alternative Investment Strategies to the Fund, Wilshire performs due diligence on prospective Underlying Managers. In evaluating Underlying Managers and their strategies, Wilshire employs a due diligence process that includes both qualitative and quantitative analysis, including a proprietary six-step qualitative manager review process that analyzes factors including organization and team, portfolio construction, investment process and risk management. Wilshire's recommendations to the Adviser regarding investments and asset allocation are guided by portfolio construction techniques and are designed to maximize perceived opportunity sets and minimize unintended risks. Wilshire's team takes a multi-faceted approach, focusing on expected return, expected risk, market dependency, diversification benefits, potential downside and other factors.

Wilshire monitors risk with respect to each Underlying Manager, Alternative Beta Provider, Alternative Investment Strategy and the Fund overall through a comprehensive assessment of risk factors, market sensitivities and exposures. Complementing Wilshire's review process, the Adviser performs its own due diligence, which may include reviews of the performance, personnel, compliance history, and infrastructure of current and prospective Underlying Managers. The Fund generally seeks to obtain exposure to Alternative Investment Strategies in a cost-efficient manner, particularly as compared to private investment vehicles that have historically been used to access alternative investment strategies. Alternative Beta Providers in particular may offer cost advantages over traditional alternative asset managers.

Principal Strategies?-?Underlying Managers The Adviser, based on recommendations from Wilshire, may determine to allocate the Fund's assets to Underlying Managers employing all or a subset of the non-traditional and alternative strategies described below at any one time, and may change those allocations from time to time in its sole discretion. The Adviser may also direct an Underlying Manager to reduce or omit its investment in certain assets or asset classes in an effort to achieve its desired combination of the Fund's strategies. In the future, Underlying Managers may employ other strategies not described herein. Equity Long/Short strategies seek to generate positive absolute returns by long and short investing, based on fundamental evaluations, research and various analytical measurements (e.g., statistical, technical or other factors), in equity and equity-related investments.

Relative Value strategies seek to identify and benefit from price discrepancies between related assets (assets that share a common financial factor, such as interest rates, an issuer or an index). Relative Value opportunities generally rely on arbitrage (the simultaneous purchase and sale of related assets) and may exist between two issuers or within the capital structure of a single issuer. Global Macro strategies seek to analyze macroeconomic variables to forecast future moves in global asset prices. A variety of different trading and investing styles can be utilized to identify opportunities across an unconstrained universe of markets and investments. Event Driven strategies seek to achieve gains from market movements in security prices caused by specific corporate events or changes in perceived relative value.

Event Driven investing involves taking a view on the likelihood and potential outcome of certain types of corporate events, including business combinations, recapitalizations, restructurings, management changes, and other situations, and taking a long and/or short position in the company's equity and/or debt securities. Opportunistic Credit strategies seek to deliver positive absolute returns regardless of economic cycle or cyclical credit availability. Opportunistic Credit managers seek to maintain diversified exposure across various fixed income and floating rate market segments, with a focus on more liquid markets, assessing the relative value across sectors and adjusting portfolio weightings based on opportunity. They generally employ bottom up credit analysis and a value approach in selecting investments.

Tactical T rading strategies seek to produce total return by long and short investing across global fixed income, equity, currency and commodity markets. Tactical Trading managers may employ various investment styles. Some Tactical Trading managers may employ both fundamental analysis and quantitative modeling techniques. Tactical Trading managers typically have no bias towards long, short or neutral holdings. Principal Strategies?-?Alternative Beta Strategies Alternative Beta Providers provide the Fund exposure to Alternative Beta Strategies. Alternative Beta Strategies, sometimes referred to as risk premia strategies, seek to generate returns through particular investments in the broader securities markets that are designed to give exposure to independent risk factors, such as price momentum, size risk, commodity carry risk, and currency carry risk.

These strategies call for investments in securities possessing one or more attributes that have historically been associated with, or are otherwise believed to offer, attractive investor returns as a result of their exposure to a particular risk factor. In general, Alternative Beta Strategies, while dependent on market movements for success, are expected to have relatively low correlation to broader market movements. The Adviser, with assistance from Wilshire, evaluates the actual and potential performance of Alternative Beta Strategies on a risk-adjusted basis. The Adviser will generally seek to allocate capital to Alternative Beta Strategies that offer attractive returns relative to the level of volatility in their investment results. In making investment decisions, the Adviser (and Wilshire, in making recommendations) will consider both the volatility of investment results associated with particular Alternative Beta Strategies and the effect of individual Alternative Beta Strategies on the risk-return profile of the Fund as a whole.

The Fund may strategically allocate capital to relatively high-risk strategies if those strategies have the potential to generate correspondingly high returns or otherwise have a positive impact on the risk-return profile of the Fund as a whole. Alternative Beta Providers may pursue a wide range of investment approaches, including strategies that seek to replicate key investment characteristics of the strategies described under Principal Strategies?-?Underlying Managers above. Alternative Beta Strategies may also include, without limitation: Value Strategies: Value strategies seek to take advantage of instruments that have low valuations relative to similar securities. Carry Strategies: Carry strategies seek to capture the tendency of higher-yielding assets to provide higher returns than lower-yielding assets.

An asset's carry is defined as its return assuming that market conditions stay the same, meaning that carry is the income earned if the asset's price remains constant over the holding period. Curve Strategies: Curve strategies seek to benefit from structural inefficiencies often present in rate and commodity future yield curves. Different points on these curves can be impacted by excessive demand or supply stemming from structural flows from different market participants such as hedgers, producers, borrowers or lenders. Trend/Momentum Strategies: Momentum strategies seek to benefit from the historical tendency of assets' recent relative performance to continue, typically focusing on investments that have performed relatively well over those that have underperformed. Trend strategies are effectively aggregations of momentum strategies, taking long positions in markets with recent positive returns and short positions in those with recent negative returns.

The persistence in price trends has delivered excess returns over time, including and during some abnormal market conditions. Mean Reversion Strategies: Mean reversion investment strategies seek to benefit from the tendency of securities prices or other metrics to revert to their historical mean in a somewhat predictable fashion in a specific time window. Equity-Specific Strategies: ?

C000177448 Performance

Total returns for C000177448 (as of 2026-10-01), from SEC filings.

Period	Total return
1 year	7.6%
3 years (annualised)	3.8%

C000177448 Risk Information

Risk metrics for C000177448, derived from monthly returns in SEC filings.

1-year volatility (annualised): 2.7%

C000177448 Costs and Fees

C000177448 costs about $216 per $10,000 invested per year in fund expenses.

Net expense ratio: 2.16%
Gross expense ratio: 3.17%
Portfolio turnover: 244%
Brokerage commissions: 6.22 bps of average net assets (SEC N-CEN)

C000177448 Cashflows

Over the 12 months to 2022-03, FS Multi-Strategy Alternatives Fund had net inflows of $118.74M, from monthly SEC N-PORT filings.

Month	Net flow
2022-03	$20.32M
2022-02	$33.88M
2022-01	$26.89M
2021-12	$11.94M
2021-11	$12.79M
2021-10	$312.58K

C000177448 Debt Constituents

No individual debt constituents are reported in FS Multi-Strategy Alternatives Fund's latest SEC N-PORT filing.

C000177448 Prospectus and SEC Filings

Official FS Multi-Strategy Alternatives Fund filings on SEC EDGAR — prospectus, portfolio holdings and annual reports.

Related Funds

Other Money Market funds tracked on ABC INVEST:

Data Sources

ABC INVEST compiles this page from public filings made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through EDGAR: portfolio holdings and monthly cashflows from Form N-PORT, expenses and returns from fund prospectuses (Form 485BPOS) and the SEC DERA Risk/Return Summary data sets, annual data from Form N-CEN, and shareholder reports from Form N-CSR.