An alternatives specialist is back in the mutual fund business with its first single-manager mutual fund.

John Culbertson Context Asset Management Chief Investment Officer

Last month Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania-based Context Asset Management unveiled the Context Macro Opportunities Fund, subadvised by New York-based First Principles Capital Management (FPCM). And stay-tuned for more new, single-manager mutual funds from Context.

"We do have a pipeline of single-manager products that we're working on ... We have some very promising things in the pipeline that we're very excited about," John Culbertson, managing director and chief investment officer of Context, tells MFWire. "We tend to like strategies that are a little more nichey, perhaps even a little less capacity ... We're much rather be opportunistic and find the right subadvisors with the right strategies."

And hiring subadvisors isn't Context's only option.

"We're always open to partnerships and joint ventures and ways to work with other people," Culbertson says.

Context favors managers whose strategies have low correlations with others and offer asymmetrical payoffs, Culbertson says.

"When looking for managers, we are really trying to find a differentiated return stream," Culbertson says.

As for the new fund powered by FPCM, it's a macro, fixed-income, relative value strategy.

"We have known First Principles for a long time ... They've run a similar strategy for a client," Culberston says. "We like the strategy a lot, particularly in this environment."

This is the first time FPCM and Context have teamed up, and this is also FPCM's first time in the mutual fund space, Culbertson says. This is Context's second venture in the mutual fund space; last year Context launched and then wound down a multi-manager alternative mutual fund. Yet the single-manager mutual fund path was always part of the plan, Culbertson says.

Going forward, he says, there are no plans to launch more multi-manager Context mutual funds. Demand, Culberston says, "is a lot higher for single-manager strategies." 

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