Ex-Bridgewater executive launches ‘Unlimited’ to bring alternative investment strategies to investors without the high fees

Unlimited uses machine learning to replicate raw hedge fund returns across multiple alternative strategies in a tax-efficient, low-cost ETF

NEW YORK, Oct. 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Bob Elliott, former member of the investment committee of Bridgewater Associates, today announced the launch of Unlimited, a new investment company specifically designed to give everyone investors gain exposure to the alpha-generating potential of alternative investment strategies without the high fees and adverse tax consequences. Alongside the launch, the company announced its first product, the ETF Unlimited HFND Multi-Strategy Return Tracker (NYSE: “HFND”), which uses a sophisticated machine learning engine to track the gross-of-fee returns of multiple hedge funds. . clues.

Mr. Elliott is CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Unlimited. He has developed innovative hedge fund strategies for over two decades, most recently as a member of the investment committee at Bridgewater Associates, where he developed strategies across all asset classes, including several for the flagship fund Pure Alpha of the company. He is joined by Bruce McNevin, co-founder and Chief Data Scientist at Unlimited. Mr. McNevin is a professor of economics at New York University and has held various data science positions at hedge funds Clinton Group and Midway Group, as well as positions at Bank of America and BlackRock.

“Having spent many years in the hedge fund industry, we have identified that investors are either underserved by the exorbitant fees in the asset class or unable to access these proprietary strategies,” said Ms. Elliott. “With HFND, we are filling what we see as a critical gap in the market by bringing together the best people in the hedge fund industry with the democratizing structure of an ETF. Ultimately, we believe that every investor should have access to institutional-grade return potential.

Investors facing a period of high volatility and uncertainty are increasingly looking for investments that will diversify their portfolios to help them weather varying market conditions. Hedge fund strategies have historically generated significant alpha, or returns above the relevant benchmark, but that alpha is typically eaten away by high fees and inefficient tax structures. Unlimited believes HFND is designed to mitigate these costs, bringing a more sophisticated approach to hedge fund replication than has been used in an ETF to date.

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Prior to the launch of HFND, hedge fund-mimicking ETFs relied on public filings, which proved too late or misleading to accurately reflect investment positioning. Other funds only offer a single hedge fund-like strategy that often experiences long periods of underperformance. Instead, Unlimited has built a set of machine learning algorithms that analyze real-time investment returns from a diverse set of hedge fund styles. HFND will allocate a basket of exchange-traded ETFs and futures to replicate the returns of these underlying hedge funds.

HFND is an actively managed ETF that will typically hold long and short positions in 30-50 ETFs and exchange-traded futures across all asset classes. It will have management fees that are about a quarter of the standard 2 and 20 cost of a typical hedge fund. The strategy will be managed by Mr. Elliott and Mr. McNevin.

About Bob Elliot
Bob Elliott is co-founder, managing director and chief investment officer at Unlimited. He has developed innovative investment strategies for more than two decades, most recently as a member of the investment committee of Bridgewater Associates, LP, the world’s largest hedge fund. Mr. Elliott worked at Bridgewater from 2005 to 2018, where he created investment strategies across equities, fixed income, credit, FX and commodities, many of which are used in the fund Pure Alpha headlight. In his role on the investment committee there, he was responsible for overseeing Pure Alpha’s foreign exchange, sovereign credit and emerging markets portfolios. Prior to that, he built and led Ray Dalio’s personal investment research team at Bridgewater for 10 years. Mr. Elliott is also the author of hundreds of widely read daily observations of Bridgewater and directly advised the Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the White House during the global financial crisis in 2008. He holds a BA in history and science from Harvard University.

About Bruce McNevin
Bruce McNevin is Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist at Unlimited. He is an economist with 35 years of experience specializing in econometric modeling and forecasting. From 2016 to 2022, he was Director of Bank of America’s Quantitative Strategy Group, where his primary responsibility was the development of mortgage-backed securities pricing models. He was at Bank of America for five years and before that he worked for 12 years at a hedge fund as managing director of Mortgage Research. For the past 16 years, Mr. McNevin has been an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at New York University, where he teaches master’s courses in financial econometrics and Bayesian econometrics. He maintains an active research program outside of his normal professional responsibilities and has recently published several articles on the use of wavelets to estimate the Beta of the Financial Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). Mr. McNevin holds a doctorate in economics from the CUNY Graduate Center.

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Launch and structure partner: Tidal ETF Services