The two new portfolios will provide the benefits of a quantitatively driven tactical asset allocation overlay with asset classes populated using Smart Beta ETFs.
The discretionary fund management models will be available exclusively via the Novia Platform from 14th March 2016.
The two new portfolios are both risk rated 10 with the following charging structures:
- Copia First Trust Smart Beta: Copia fee (0.3% plus VAT) and First Trust Total Expense Ratio (0.5%)
- Copia Dorsey Wright Smart Beta: Copia fee (0.55% plus VAT) and First Trust TER (0.55%)
First Trust Smart Beta
The Copia First Trust Smart Beta portfolio is made up of First Trust’s AlphaDEX ETFs. The strategy selects and weights stocks based on investment merit, as opposed to size, to identify stocks that exhibit fundamental characteristics that enable them to provide the greatest potential for capital appreciation.
Copia employs a quantitatively driven country rotation alongside a partial risk rotation strategy to determine the optimal asset allocation for the portfolio of AlphaDEX ETFs.
Dorsey Wright Smart Beta
The Copia Dorsey Wright Smart Beta portfolio offers the combined benefits of access to Smart Beta ETFs with the intelligence overlay and technical analysis provided by Dorsey Wright (DWA). Using ‘Point and Figure’ charts for relative strength to make asset allocation decisions, the philosophy is that trends in relative strength can be used to distinguish winners from losers in any market.
DWA implements a strict rules-based methodology to select the asset classes with the best relative strength.
New frontier
Bill Vasilieff, chief executive at Novia Financial, said: “Both First Trust and Dorsey Wright have tremendous proven track records in their markets and are leaders in their fields. We are keen to build on the success of the existing Copia model range and the addition of these new models is recognition of the performance that smart beta can generate.”
Eric Anderson, senior vice president, First Trust, said: “We are pleased to be chosen by Copia and Dorsey Wright to bring investors closer to ETFs that are focused on merit based stock selection as opposed to simply weighting on company size.”
Jay Gragnani, vice president Dorsey, Wright & Associates, concluded: “Entering the UK market in this capacity is a new frontier for us, and we are very fortunate to be working with Copia to bring these strategies to the financial advisory community in the UK.
“We have partnered with First Trust in North America for nearly 10 years educating and supporting financial advisers, and we are very excited about expanding this partnership within the European Market.”
