MainStay VP IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy Portfolio
Data updated: 2026-08-24
C000204554 — MainStay VP IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy Portfolio. Market-Neutral · $196.76M AUM · 1.01% expense ratio. Holdings, fees, performance and SEC filings.
C000204554 Fund Overview
MainStay VP IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy Portfolio is a US mutual fund managed by Mainstay Vp Funds Trust, categorised as Market-Neutral. ABC INVEST provides holdings, performance, costs, cashflows, risk data, prospectus documents and SEC filings, sourced from SEC filings.
- Type: US mutual fund
- Manager: Mainstay Vp Funds Trust
- Category: Market-Neutral
- Assets under management: $196.76M
- 1-year return: 14.8%
- SEC CIK: 0000887340
- SEC series ID: S000063068
- Share class ID: C000204554
C000204554 Investment Objective and Strategy
MainStay VP IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy Portfolio describes its objective and strategy as follows, from its latest prospectus filed with the SEC by Mainstay Vp Funds Trust.
Investment objective
The Portfolio seeks investment returns that correspond (before fees and expenses) generally to the price and yield performance of its underlying index, the NYLI Hedge Multi-Strategy Index. The NYLI Hedge Multi-Strategy Index seeks to achieve performance similar to the overall hedge fund universe by replicating the beta portion of the hedge fund return characteristics (i.e., that portion of the returns that are non-idiosyncratic, or unrelated to manager skill).
Principal investment strategy
The Portfolio invests, under normal circumstances, at least 80% of its net assets, plus the amount of any borrowings for investment purposes, in the investments included in the NYLI Hedge Multi-Strategy Index (the Underlying Index). The Portfolio, by seeking to achieve performance similar to the overall hedge fund universe, is expected to provide investment returns that typically have a low correlation to traditional equity and fixed-income indices, lower volatility than traditional equity indices, and similar volatility to traditional investment grade fixed-income indices. The Underlying Index typically consists of 30 to 70 component securities (Underlying Index Components) selected in accordance with the rules-based methodology for construction of the Underlying Index. The Underlying Index Components primarily include exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and/or other exchange-traded vehicles issuing equity securities organized in the U.S., such as exchange-traded commodity pools (ETVs), and may include exchange-traded notes (ETNs) (such ETFs, ETVs and ETNs are referred to collectively as exchange-traded products or ETPs).
The Portfolio is a fund of funds that seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing primarily in ETPs, but may also invest in one or more financial instruments, including but not limited to, futures contracts, reverse repurchase agreements, options, and swap agreements (collectively, Financial Instruments) in order to seek to achieve exposure to investment strategies and/or asset classes that are similar to those of the Underlying Index. To the extent that the Underlying Index concentrates (i.e., holds 25% or more of its total assets) in the securities of a particular industry or group of industries, the Portfolio will concentrate its investments to approximately the same extent as the Underlying Index. The Portfolio may invest up to 20% of its net assets in investments that are not Underlying Index Components, but which New York Life Investment Management LLC (New York Life Investment Management), the Portfolios advisor, believes will help the Portfolio track its Underlying Index.
For example, the Portfolio may hold the underlying portfolio constituents of one or more ETPs that are Underlying Index Components, or a representative sample thereof. The Portfolio may also purchase ETPs that are not Underlying Index Components. The Underlying Index Components may include as a component one or more ETFs advised New York Life Investment Management (Affiliated ETFs), and the Portfolio will typically invest in any Affiliated ETF included in the Underlying Index. The Portfolio also may invest in Affiliated ETFs that are not components of the Underlying Index if it is expected that such an investment will help the Portfolio track the Underlying Index. The Portfolio employs a passive management or indexing investment approach designed to track the performance of the Underlying Index, which was developed by New York Life Investment Management.
The Underlying Index generally is based on the premise that aggregated returns of hedge funds in a broad hedge fund universe display, over time, significant exposures to a set of common asset classes. The Underlying Index seeks to achieve performance similar to the overall hedge fund universe by replicating the beta portion of the hedge fund return characteristics (i.e., that portion of the returns that are non-idiosyncratic, or unrelated to manager skill) over longer term periods and not on a daily basis. The Underlying Index does not seek to replicate the alpha portion of the return characteristics of the overall hedge fund universe. Managers included in the broad hedge fund universe may employ investment styles including, but not limited to: Equity strategies, including long-only, long bias, long/short, market neutral and dedicated short strategies; Fixed income strategies, including long-only and long/short credit strategies, high yield, asset-backed, and convertible bond strategies; Emerging market strategies, including global and region- and country-specific strategies; Sector strategies, including healthcare and biotechnology, technology, real estate, energy, financials and natural resources strategies; and Specialized and alternative strategies, including multi-strategy, balanced, global macro, event-driven, options, merger arbitrage and managed futures strategies.
The Underlying Index may include both long and short positions in ETFs and ETVs. As opposed to taking long positions in which an investor seeks to profit from increases in the price of a security, short selling (or selling short) is a technique used by the Portfolio to try and profit from the falling price of a security. Short selling involves selling a security that has been borrowed from a third party with the intention of buying the identical security back at a later date to return to that third party. The basic principle of short selling is that one can profit by selling a security now at a high price and later buying it back at a lower price. The short seller hopes to profit from a decline in the price of the security between the sale and the repurchase, as the seller will pay less to buy the security than it received on selling the security.
The Underlying Index Components generally provide exposures to: Alternative strategies including merger arbitrage, market neutral, long/short, options, private equity replication, and managed futures; U.S. large-capitalization equity; U.S. small-capitalization equity; U.S. growth equity; U.S. value equity; Emerging market equity, debt and sovereign debt, including small-capitalization equity; Foreign equity (Europe, Australasia & Far East), including small-capitalization equity; U.S. and foreign preferred securities; U.S. investment grade corporate debt; U.S. government short-, intermediate- and long-term maturity obligations; U.S. high yield (or junk) debt; U.S. Treasury Inflation Protection Securities (TIPS); U.S. mortgage-backed debt; U.S. convertible debt; U.S. floating rate bank loans; Municipal bonds; Foreign sovereign debt; Foreign currencies and currency futures; U.S.
and foreign real estate investment trusts; Commodities; The implied volatility of the S&P 500 Index; and Digital assets, through ETPs that seek exposure to Bitcoin or other types of digital assets, subject to a maximum weight in the Underlying Index of 2.5% at the time of rebalance. New York Life Investment Management anticipates that, generally, the Portfolio will hold all of the investments that comprise the Underlying Index in approximate proportion to their weightings in the Underlying Index. However, the Portfolio may use a representative sampling strategy in seeking to track the performance of its Underlying Index when an Underlying Index Component is not available or when New York Life Investment Management believes it would be beneficial for the Portfolio to use a representative sampling strategy, such as when the use of a representative sampling strategy would reduce portfolio trading and implementation costs for the Portfolio.
When using a representative sampling strategy, the Portfolio will invest in a sample of its Underlying Index Components where risk, return and other characteristics closely resemble the risk, return and other characteristics of the Underlying Index as a whole.
C000204554 Holdings
Top 10 holdings of MainStay VP IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy Portfolio by percentage of net assets, from the fund's latest SEC N-PORT filing.
| Holding | % of net assets |
|---|---|
| iShares Floating Rate Bond ETF | 16.58% |
| Invesco Govt And Agcy Lex | 8.75% |
| Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF | 8.13% |
| Franklin Senior Loan ETF | 8.03% |
| Vanguard Short-Term Treasury ETF | 7.29% |
| iShares Core S&P Small-Cap ETF | 5.96% |
| iShares MSCI USA Momentum Factor ETF | 5.12% |
| SPDR Bloomberg Investment Grade Floating Rate ETF | 4.98% |
| iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ex China ETF | 4.75% |
| iShares Convertible Bond ETF | 3.84% |
C000204554 Portfolio Allocation
Asset-class allocation of MainStay VP IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy Portfolio by percentage of net assets, from the latest SEC N-PORT filing.
| Asset class | Allocation |
|---|---|
| Other | 99.2% |
| Cash & Equivalents | 12.4% |
| Derivatives | 0.2% |
C000204554 Performance
Total returns for C000204554 (as of 2026-10-01), from SEC filings.
| Period | Total return |
|---|---|
| YTD | 9.2% |
| 1 year | 14.8% |
| 3 years (annualised) | 9.7% |
| 5 years (annualised) | 4.5% |
C000204554 Risk Information
Risk metrics for C000204554, derived from monthly returns in SEC filings.
- 1-year volatility (annualised): 5.6%
C000204554 Costs and Fees
C000204554 costs about $101 per $10,000 invested per year in fund expenses.
- Net expense ratio: 1.01%
- Gross expense ratio: 1.13%
- Portfolio turnover: 75%
- Brokerage commissions: 10.28 bps of average net assets (SEC N-CEN)
C000204554 Cashflows
Over the 12 months to 2026-06, MainStay VP IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy Portfolio had net outflows of $36.59M, from monthly SEC N-PORT filings.
| Month | Net flow |
|---|---|
| 2026-06 | −$3.09M |
| 2026-05 | −$4.38M |
| 2026-04 | −$4.30M |
| 2026-03 | −$5.22M |
| 2026-02 | −$3.59M |
| 2026-01 | −$3.38M |
C000204554 Debt Constituents
No individual debt constituents are reported in MainStay VP IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy Portfolio's latest SEC N-PORT filing.
C000204554 Prospectus and SEC Filings
Official MainStay VP IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy Portfolio filings on SEC EDGAR — prospectus, portfolio holdings and annual reports.
- Prospectus (485BPOS) — filed 2026-04-16
- Prospectus (485BPOS) — filed 2025-04-16
- Prospectus (485BPOS) — filed 2024-04-19
- Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2026-08-24
- Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2026-05-26
- Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2026-02-26
- Annual census (N-CEN) — filed 2026-03-13
- Annual census (N-CEN) — filed 2025-03-14
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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.