A group of tactical fixed income shops in Southern California have added a sixth mutual fund to their 15-year-old fund family.

Albert George "Skip" Schweiss III Sierra Group of Companies CEO

Earlier this month, James St. Aubin (chief investment officer for the Sierra Group of Companies' Sierra Mutual Funds [profile]) and David Wright (co-founder of the Sierra Mutual Funds) unveiled the launch of the Sierra Tactical Risk Spectrum 30 Fund. Like with the existing Sierra funds, Wright Fund Management, LLC (part of the Sierra group) serves as the new fund's investment advisor, and the fund is a series of the Northern Lights Fund Trust.

The new fund's inception date was September 30, and it now has $44.9 million in AUM. It comes in four flavors: A shares (SRTAX) with up to 375 basis points in up front load, up to 100 bps in deferred load, and an expense ratio of 204 bps; C shares with an expense ratio of 279 bps; Investor shares (SRTNX) with an expense ratio of 219 bps; and Institutional shares (SRTJX) with an expense ratio of 179 bps. All those expense ratios included an 8-bps fee waiver promised through January 31, 2024.

The Sierra Tactical Risk Spectrum 30 Fund's PM team includes: Kenneth Sleeper, managing director and portfolio manager at Wright; Douglas Loeffler, executive vice president and PM; and Marshall Quan, lead portfolio analyst and PM. The new fund is a fund of funds that invests in unaffilied underlying mutual funds and ETFs (another Sierra company, Ocean Park, is a model portfolio shop) across a variety of areas. The idea is to have, under normal market conditions, an average equity exposure ranging from 15 to 30 percent over a three-year period.

The launch of the Sierra Tactical Risk Spectrum 30 Fund comes after the launch last May of a similar fund featuring a slightly different equity exposure target range. That fund, the Sierra Tactical Risk Spectrum 50 Fund now has about $178 million in AUM. Both funds incorporate Sierra's "proprietary trailing-stop discipline" for signaling when to sell holdings.

St. Aubin describes the launch of the Sierra Tactical Risk Spectrum 30 Fund as offering "another multi-asset solution for investors with a conservative risk profile to access Sierra's time-tested, truly tactical investment process."

"The markets are as volatile as ever, and investors are looking for investment approaches that remain disciplined but provide the ability to participate in the market's upside," Wright states.

The new fund's other service providers included: BBD, LLP as independent accounting firm; Northern Lights Distributors, LLC as distributor; Thompson Hine LLP as counsel; U.S. Bank, N.A. as custodian; and Ultimus Fund Solutions, LLC as transfer agent. 

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