A derivatives veteran who helms a new mutual fund startup is looking to expand his team and his lineup within the next half year or so.

Joe Halpern, CEO of Exceed Investments, confirms that in the next three to six months, he "might add more" staff and launch more mutual funds, too. And that's not all.

"The idea is that down the road we may come out with an ETF," Halpern tells MFWire, adding that he's also setting up a separately managed account for one client and working with insurance carriers on variable annuities, too.

New York City-based Exceed debuted its first mutual fund, the Exceed Investments Structured Shield Index Strategy Fund, four months ago with both advisory and institutional shares available. The launch followed the debut last year of Exceed's family of indexes on the NASDAQ. The fund tracks Exceed's EXPROT index, which is designed to use options to, as Halpern puts it, capture the S&P 500's gains (up to 15 percent total each year) while limiting the losses (to 12.5 percent total).

Halpern worked at Lehman Brothers after its infamous 2008 collapse, winding down an exotic, multi-billion-dollar, commodities-based derivatives portfolio. Prior to that, he worked on the global capital markets desk at ING. The idea behind Exceed, he says, is "to provide a real high level of definition for that end investor."

"That level of definition is pretty compelling," Halpern says. "We're really reshaping the risk-reward exposure. We're making it very transparent."

To launch the mutual fund, Halpern teamed up with Forum Funds and used their Atlantic Fund Services Series Trust. Union Bank handles custody. He sees the mutual fund structure as being a gateway to the 401(k) world, at least once the fund has built up enough of a track record.

"We have internal distribution," Halpern says. "We have a couple of strategic distribution partners." 

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