The Fund is an actively managed exchange-traded fund (“ETF”). The investment objective of the Fund is to seek to provide long-term capital appreciation. The Adviser and Parametric Portfolio Associates LLC (the “Sub-Adviser”) seek to fulfill the Fund’s objective by (1) investing in an underlying base portfolio of equity securities (the “Equity Portfolio”) that primarily include equity securities of companies included in the Solactive GBS United States 500 Index (the “Equity Portfolio Index”) and (2) generating incremental total return via “beta-neutral” call overwriting that combines selling call options on the S&P 500® Index (the “Underlying Index”) with offsetting long equity exposure, including through investment in futures on the Underlying Index or in options on the Underlying Index or on the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (the “Underlying ETF”), including Flexible Exchange Options (“FLEX Options”) that reference the Underlying Index or Underlying ETF.
Under normal circumstances, the Fund invests at least 80% of its net assets (plus any borrowings for investment purposes) in equity securities. This policy may be changed without shareholder approval; however, shareholders would be notified upon 60 days’ notice in writing of any changes.
Equity securities generally represent an ownership interest in an issuer or may be convertible into or represent a right to acquire an ownership interest in an issuer. With respect to the Fund’s Equity Portfolio, the Fund invests primarily in common stock. The Fund’s performance will largely depend on the performance of the Equity Portfolio. The Equity Portfolio Index seeks to provide the returns of the 500 largest U.S. companies, as measured by market capitalization. The Equity Portfolio Index is comprised of the common stock of 500 U.S. companies ranked by total market capitalization in descending order. The constituents of the Equity Portfolio Index are weighted according to the securities’ free float market capitalization. The Equity Portfolio Index is rebalanced and reconstituted quarterly.
In constructing the Equity Portfolio, the Fund seeks to provide investment returns that are substantially similar to the Equity Portfolio Index while limiting the overlap between its investments that reflect constituents of the Equity Portfolio and the underlying constituents of the options in which the Fund invests (the “Options Portfolio”, as described in more detail below) to less than 70% on an ongoing basis in an effort to avoid being subject to the “straddle rules” under federal income tax law (straddle rules, if applicable, may defer losses realized by the Fund and accordingly increase capital gains; see “Tax Risk” below). The Equity Portfolio weightings are determined via an optimization process intended to provide return and risk characteristics that closely track those of the Equity Portfolio Index across key fundamental attributes such as value, growth, size, volatility, and momentum in addition to categorical attributes such as sector and industry. Through this optimization of holdings representing constituents of the Equity Portfolio Index, the Equity Portfolio is not expected to hold each of the constituents of the Equity Portfolio Index and the Fund’s investments that reflect constituents of the Equity Portfolio may be overweight or underweight as compared to the Equity Portfolio Index’s weighting.
The Fund expects that dividends received from its investment in equity securities that comprise the Equity Portfolio will be distributed to shareholders on a quarterly basis.
The Fund may incorporate tax loss harvesting within the Equity Portfolio to maximize realization of losses. Realized losses in the Equity Portfolio may be used to offset realized gains in the portfolio.
The Fund will also systematically sell (write) out-of-the-money call option contracts, based on the Underlying Index, which have an expiration date of approximately two weeks or less. The Fund will sell such call option contracts on the Underlying Index in a notional amount that is equal to or less than the market value of the total portfolio. Because the returns of the Equity Portfolio and of the Underlying Index are expected to be substantially similar, the sale of such call options (which are generally considered to be “uncovered”) may have the impact of reducing average equity market exposure of the Fund and capping potential gains from the Fund’s Equity Portfolio. To seek to offset this embedded directional short equity market exposure in the written call options, the Fund will add incremental long equity market exposure, with an objective of enhancing total return. The incremental long equity market exposure may be achieved through investing in derivatives, including in futures on the Underlying Index or in options on the Underlying Index or the Underlying ETF, including FLEX Options that reference the Underlying Index or Underlying ETF. The amount of the incremental long equity market exposure seeks to match the initial directional market exposure of the call options when they were written. This is intended to allow the Fund to maintain an average target beta of approximately 1.0, whereby “beta” is defined as a measure of a stock’s volatility relative to the overall market. The overall market, such as the S&P 500 Index, has a beta of 1.0 while a stock or portfolio that is more (less) volatile than the market over time has a beta above (below) 1.0. Derivative instruments used by the Fund will be counted toward the Fund’s 80% policy discussed above to the extent they have economic characteristics similar to the securities included within that policy.
In general, an option contract is an agreement between a buyer and a seller that gives the purchaser of the option the right to purchase (in the case of a call option) or sell (in the case of a put option) the underlying asset (or deliver cash equal to the change in value of an underlying asset or index) at a specified price (“strike price”) within a specified time period or at a specified future date. Selling a call option entitles the seller to a premium equal to the value of the option at the time of the trade. In the event the underlying asset declines in value, the value of a call option will generally decrease (and may end up worthless). Conversely, in the event the underlying asset appreciates in value, the value of a call option will generally increase. FLEX Options are customizable exchange-traded option contracts guaranteed for settlement by the Options Clearing Corporation (the “OCC”). Option terms that can be customized include exercise price, exercise styles, and expiration dates.
A call option is considered “out-of-the-money” when the strike price of the option exceeds the current price of the underlying asset. By selling call options, the Fund will receive premiums but will give up the opportunity to benefit from potential increases in the value of the Underlying Index above the exercise prices of such options. As a result of writing call options, the Fund may forgo performance in market environments with significant equity market appreciation in which the Underlying Index exceeds the strike price of the written call option. However, the Sub-Adviser will seek to “ladder” the Fund’s written call option positions to mitigate this risk. “Laddering” is an investment technique that utilizes multiple option positions over multiple expiration dates to reduce the concentration risk of a concentrated exposure to a single option expiration and to create more opportunities to roll option positions (i.e., one option position expires and a new option position is opened in the same underlying security) during extended periods of market appreciation. In this regard, the Sub-Adviser expects to write more frequent, short-dated call options with one to two-week expirations in tranches with such expirations being staggered approximately every two to four trading days. The Sub-Adviser believes that this may provide the opportunity for a more diversified options portfolio with more consistent greater upside appreciation profile compared to a written call option portfolio with a single position.
The Fund will also incorporate a risk management strategy implemented through the purchase of put options on the Underlying Index, which is intended to partially hedge the Fund’s exposure to equity market losses. Rather than seek to hedge the Fund’s exposure to absolute equity market loss (that is, to result in portfolio losses that are less than the losses of the Underlying Index), the objective of the risk management strategy is to seek to prevent against portfolio losses that exceed the losses of the Underlying Index during periods of significant declines in the Underlying Index.