Wild Markets Perfect for Liquid Alternative Funds Says Aurora Manager

The recent spike in market volatility makes this the perfect time to own a multi-strategy fund that utilizes a number of different trading strategies, especially ones that do not depend on the direction of the market, said Scott Schweighauser, portfolio manager for the Aurora Horizons Fund (AHFAX). 'If you look at the things that have done well for us this year, our portfolio hedge component focused on the short selling of securities is doing the best, so we have a lot of tools at our disposal to allocate capital to areas that are very abundant with opportunity,' said Schweighauser. The Aurora Horizons Fund has fallen 2.3% thus far in 2015, according to fund-tracker Morningstar. The S&P 500 has dropped 2.8% over the same period. Macro trends including volatility in Chinese markets and uncertainty over the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies laid low a number of prominent hedge funds this summer. Regarding this week’s decision by the Federal Reserve to leave rates unchanged, Schweighauser said a hike will indeed arrive eventually and be a boon to his fund going forward.