Portfolio Turnover
The Fund pays transaction costs, such as commissions, when it buys and sells securities (or
“turns over” its portfolio). A higher portfolio turnover rate may indicate higher transaction costs. These costs, which are not reflected in Annual Fund Operating
Expenses or in the Example, affect the Fund’s performance. During the most recent fiscal year, the Fund’s portfolio turnover rate was 91.00% of the average value of its
portfolio.
Principal Investment Strategies
The Fund uses a multi-pronged approach to total return, sourced from dividends, options premium and capital appreciation. The
Fund seeks to achieve its objective by (1) creating an actively managed portfolio of equity securities and (2) by selling (writing) call options with exposure to the S&P 500® Index (the “Index”). Under normal circumstances, the Fund invests at least 80% of its net assets in a
combination of equity securities and options. For these purposes, equity securities are securities that represent an ownership interest in the issuer. A call option gives the
purchaser of the option the right to buy, and the seller of the option the obligation to sell, an underlying security or futures contract at a specified price during the option
period.
The Fund is designed to provide investors with total return while
exposing investors to less risk through lower volatility than the broad U.S. large-capitalization stock market. If the Fund is successful in providing lower volatility, then the
value of the Fund’s portfolio will fluctuate less than the overall market over a full market cycle (typically, a three to five year time horizon). In order to reduce volatility and provide a diversified source of total return, the Fund will write call options based on the Index or on exchange-traded funds that seek to replicate the Index (“S&P 500® ETFs”). Such options will be at an exercise price (also known as a strike price) that is out-of-the-money. The
premiums generated from the written call options are an important source of the Fund's diversified return stream and will be reinvested in the Fund’s portfolio,
instead of having the premiums paid out to investors as income. Selling call options may also reduce volatility. The written call options are reset periodically to seek
to better capitalize on current market conditions and opportunities; these resets assist the Fund in seeking to provide relatively stable returns. In addition to the use of the options overlay strategy, the Fund may use derivatives, primarily futures contracts and options on futures, to gain exposure to its index or certain securities in its index or to more effectively gain targeted equity exposure from its cash positions. To the extent the Fund invests in index futures with exposure to securities in the index, it may have the effect of increasing the Fund’s exposure to a relatively small number of securities, making the Fund’s shares more sensitive to the economic results of those securities.
Long Equity Portfolio – in managing the equity portion of the Fund, the subadviser employs a
fundamental data science enabled investment approach that combines research, data insights, and risk management. The subadviser defines data science as the discipline of extracting useful insights from collections of information, and the subadviser utilizes the insights as a part of its investment process. The subadviser utilizes proprietary techniques to process, analyze, and combine a wide variety
of information, including the subadviser’s multi-decade history of proprietary fundamental research, company financial statements, and a variety of other data sources that the subadviser finds relevant to conducting fundamental analysis. The subadviser combines insights derived from these sources to forecast the financial prospects of each security, also known as fundamental analysis. Alongside its own insights, the subadviser’s portfolio management team uses the forecasts developed through data science techniques to help to identify securities that are priced favorably relative to their associated levels of risk. The subadviser’s portfolio management team then constructs a portfolio that seeks to maximize expected future financial performance while controlling for key risks to the underlying companies’ businesses identified by the subadviser’s analysis. The subadviser assesses key risks by analyzing potential events or conditions that may have a negative impact on the subadviser’s valuation of a particular security. Such key risks may include, but are not limited to, sensitivity to changes in macroeconomic conditions, competitive risks from existing companies or new entrants, and operational risks related to the companies’ business models. The subadviser regularly evaluates the efficacy of the sources of information included within the investment process, and seeks to identify new data sources that will be additive to the subadviser’s forecasts and portfolio construction, assessing the validity of its models and assumptions as new information becomes available and market conditions change.
The Fund invests primarily in large, well-established companies, which
are companies with market capitalizations similar to those within the universe of the Index at the time of purchase. The Fund also may invest in equity securities of U.S.
mid-cap companies.
The subadviser may sell a security for several reasons. A security may be sold due to a change in the company’s fundamentals or if the subadviser believes the security is no longer attractively valued relative to its associated levels of risk. Investments may also be sold if the subadviser identifies a stock that it believes offers a better investment opportunity.
Options Overlay – the Fund’s options overlay is intended to provide the Fund with consistent options premium as a diversified
source of total return, as well as dampen the Fund’s overall volatility profile. To implement the strategy, the subadviser sells exchange-traded equity options that typically have a reference asset of the Index or an S&P 500® ETF. Premiums are generated