Easterly Hedge High Income

C000224302 Fund Overview

Easterly Hedge High Income is a US mutual fund managed by James Alpha Funds Trust, categorised as Europe Small Cap Value Equity. ABC INVEST provides holdings, performance, costs, cashflows, risk data, prospectus documents and SEC filings, sourced from SEC filings.

• Type: US mutual fund
• Manager: James Alpha Funds Trust
• Category: Europe Small Cap Value Equity
• Assets under management: $7.86M
• SEC CIK: 0001829774
• SEC series ID: S000070612
• Share class ID: C000224302

C000224302 Investment Objective and Strategy

Easterly Hedge High Income describes its objective and strategy as follows, from its latest prospectus filed with the SEC by James Alpha Funds Trust.

Investment objective

The Fund seeks to provide high current income as its primary investment objective and,

Principal investment strategy

The Fund will seek to achieve its investment objectives by investing, under normal market conditions, primarily all of its assets in fixed income and fixed income-related securities, using a combination of long-short, long-only, short-only and hedging strategies. Fixed income securities in which the Fund will invest are anticipated to generally consist of U.S. and foreign fixed income and fixed income-related securities of varying maturities and credit quality. There are no maturity limitations on the fixed income investments held by the Fund. The Fund may invest in securities of any grade including those that are rated below investment grade at the time of purchase (commonly referred to as ?high-yield? or ?junk? securities) including those bonds rated lower than ?BBB-? by Standard & Poor?s Ratings Services and Fitch, Inc.

or ?Baa3? by Moody?s Investors Services, Inc.). These include, among others, corporate bonds and bank loans, asset-backed securities and mortgage-backed securities, U.S. government securities, non-U.S. sovereign debt securities and preferred securities. Fixed income-related securities include, but are not limited to, closed-end funds and derivative instruments, including options; financial futures; swaps, including credit default swaps; options on futures and swaps; and forward foreign currency contracts, that seek to provide the same or similar economic exposure as a physical investment in the above securities. The below-investment grade fixed income securities in which the Fund may invest are considered speculative with respect to the issuer?s capacity to pay interest and repay principal.

Hedging strategies may be used by the Fund in an attempt to preserve capital and mitigate risk, by hedging against changes in the price of other securities held by the Fund, and may involve purchasing put options, selling debt or equity securities short or writing covered call options. Derivative instruments may also be used for investment purposes, and for currency and interest rate hedging purposes. The Fund seeks to achieve its investment objectives by investing its assets in a combination of distinct investment strategies managed by different sub-advisers and, in some cases, by the Adviser. The Adviser is responsible for selecting and allocating assets among the Fund?s investment strategies. The Adviser is also responsible for selecting and overseeing one or more sub-advisers to manage each investment strategy.

Not all of the Fund?s sub-adviser(s) listed for the Fund may be actively managing assets for the Fund at all times. The Adviser also has discretion to manage directly all or a portion of such investment strategies. The principal investment strategies that may be employed by the Fund include the following: 1) Senior Loan Floating Rate - The senior loan floating rate strategy concentrates on investment opportunities in senior-secured and second-lien loans and bonds; 2) Short Duration High Yield - The short duration high yield strategy seeks to generate uncorrelated returns through stable income and reduced volatility. The portfolio managers seek to identify short-maturity high yield bonds in smaller, less-followed companies, hedged primarily with an exchange-traded fund (?ETF?) that tracks the Russell 2000 Index, which has exhibited a strong correlation to high yield credit spreads, to attempt to further dampen volatility during market corrections.

The strategy is diversified across 35?45 high yield bonds. The short position will range between 10 percent to30 percent of the nominal value of the strategy during periods of normal market conditions and may increase to 50 percent during periods of high volatility; 3) Relative Value Long/Short Debt - The relative value long/short debt strategy seeks to take advantage of perceived discrepancies in the market prices of certain fixed income securities, as well as certain convertible bond, closed-end fund and derivative securities. The strategy is primarily focused within the corporate credit, securitized credit and agency and non-agency mortgage-backed securities sectors. It invests in both investment and non-investment grade bonds. Proprietary research tools include credit spread analysis, which is based on, among other things, a proprietary credit default methodology, mortgage prepayment forecasting and credit option-adjusted spread analysis; 4) Risk-Adjusted Long/Short Debt - The risk-adjusted long/short debt strategy seeks to take advantage of credit rating upgrades and downgrades offering attractive returns while seeking to minimize interest rate and currency risks.

During stressed market environments, the strategy actively manages its long core positions with corresponding hedges to preserve capital, while seeking to profit from individual credit deteriorations on the short side. The strategy is primarily focused on investments in U.S. and European fixed income securities, and may establish long and short positions in a variety of derivative and other instruments for risk management and investment purposes. Under normal market conditions, the strategy may establish short interest rate positions to manage interest rate risk. The strategy will employ leverage through investments in derivative instruments and through establishing short hedging positions in Treasury bills and other fixed income or equity securities. The strategy seeks to invest in securities with ratings from B to BBB by Standard and Poor?s Financial Services LLC, but may invest in securities of any credit rating, including below-investment grade fixed income securities.

The strategy uses proprietary models for security selection in combination with fundamental analysis. One or more of the above strategies may be achieved through investments in ETFs and other exchange-traded products, and other registered investment companies instead of direct investments. The Adviser?s investment process is based on a consultative four step approach: 1) Asset Allocation - Defining objectives and constraints, determining asset classes and determining strategic weightings based on objectives and constraints; 2) Adviser Research - Sourcing and vetting investment managers; 3) Risk Management - Identifying, characterizing and assessing portfolio risks, and suggesting ways to reduce risk; 4) Portfolio Construction - Constructing the portfolio by incorporating input from all three of the above.

The Fund?s investments in the types of securities described in this Prospectus vary from time to time and, at any time, the Fund may not be invested in all types of securities described in this Prospectus. The Fund may also invest in securities and other investments not described in this Prospectus, but which are described in the SAI. Any percentage limitations with respect to assets of the Fund are applied at the time of purchase.

C000224302 Costs and Fees

C000224302 costs about $291 per $10,000 invested per year in fund expenses.

• Net expense ratio: 2.91%
• Gross expense ratio: 3.16%
• Portfolio turnover: 277%
• Brokerage commissions: 3.15 bps of average net assets (SEC N-CEN)

C000224302 Cashflows

Over the 12 months to 2021-08, Easterly Hedge High Income had net inflows of $20.05M, from monthly SEC N-PORT filings.

C000224302 Debt Constituents

No individual debt constituents are reported in Easterly Hedge High Income's latest SEC N-PORT filing.

C000224302 Prospectus and SEC Filings

Official Easterly Hedge High Income filings on SEC EDGAR — prospectus, portfolio holdings and annual reports.

• Prospectus (485BPOS) — filed 2021-04-09
• Prospectus (485BPOS) — filed 2021-02-12
• Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2021-10-26
• Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2021-07-30
• Annual census (N-CEN) — filed 2021-11-12

Related Funds

Other Europe Small Cap Value Equity funds tracked on ABC INVEST:

• WisdomTree Europe SmallCap Dividend Fund (DFE)
• James Alpha Hedged High Income Portfolio (INCAX)
• Sparkline International Intangible Value ETF (DTAN)

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.