Under the direction of the Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) to suspended WAMS from registrable activity, and in cooperation with WAMS, Fieldhouse has been assigned the new manager in conjunction its principal regulator, the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) confirmation of no objection.
Fieldhouse will now operate the Wells Plus 6ix Retirement One Fund, Wells Plus 6ix Mortgage Opportunities Fund and the Wells Plus 6ix Multi Strategy Fund under a plan of arrangement between WAMS and the ASC facilitating their respective orderly closing.
Fieldhouse is an established independent fund manager, portfolio manager and exempt market dealer based in Vancouver with several offices throughout British Columbia. Their highly experienced team of portfolio managers and industry professionals across all asset classes puts Fieldhouse in a strong position to takeover the WAMS funds and offer the WAMS clients an opportunity to restore value to their portfolios as well as faith in the investment industry. The BCSC and ASC confirmed no objection with the change in control on January 30th, 2019.
Fieldhouse President and Portfolio Manager, Nick Laxton, will manage the funds through this closing mandate and has over 20 years investment management experience specializing in fixed income.
Fieldhouse CEO, Doug Sereda, said, “This is a great opportunity for our team to deliver an industry operated solution with the prospect of restoring the client experience.”
Nick’s underlying philosophy is that a disciplined and systematic approach provides a measured framework to assess the effectiveness of proposed strategies and the risks they present. That framework allows a more scientific or engineering approach to understand the strengths and weaknesses of various strategies designed by the Advisor and our research team. Strategies that become live for clients must meet stringent criteria that first and foremost meet the risk preferences of the client and pass several stress tests and exhibit repeatable behaviour through a variety of markets. Naturally repeatable behaviour can equally mean strategies that consistently lose money as well as make money so that the research process is continuous to remove weaker strategies and replace them with those the advisor considers to have stronger prospects.
The Advisor generally makes no directional calls on the market at a strategy level, choosing to tune risk based upon the prevailing market at a portfolio level. A principal reason is that strategies employed by the Advisor are mainly “relative value” – they are market neutral and tend not to benefit from market direction. Relative value enjoys naturally hedging positions which help diversify risk, although often at the expense of returns in a strongly trending market. Nevertheless relative value can benefit from underlying economic themes if successfully captured in a weakly directional market.
Use of a basket of systematic strategies and a proprietary risk model allows the Advisor to tune a portfolio to the risk level appropriate to the client. This means the return targets of the portfolio are discussed as well as the risk of the portfolio and the potential drawdowns it presents. Our “eyes wide open” approach means our portfolios are tailor made to suit a clients risk tolerance and investment objectives.
