mutual fund cpo compliance

The release adopting Rule 18f-4 (the “Adopting Release”) devotes an entire section to discussing how “a fund that invests in other registered investment companies (‘underlying funds’)” should comply with the value-at-risk (“VaR”) requirements of the rule. This post considers three circumstances in which a fund investing in underlying funds:

  1. Does not invest in any derivatives

As with Fund-of-Funds, the release adopting Rule 18f-4 (the “Adopting Release”) devotes a section to sub-advised funds. We again consider three types of funds:

  • VaR Funds in which a sub-adviser manages their entire portfolio (“Single Sub-Adviser Funds”);
  • VaR Funds in which one or more sub-advisers manage a portion or “sleeve” of their portfolio (“Sleeve

This post continues our assessment of whether the Limited Derivatives User requirements of Rule 18f-4(c)(4) effectively and efficiently accomplish the SEC’s aim of providing “an objective standard to identify funds that use derivatives in a limited manner.” Here we question whether the “gross notional amount” of a derivatives transaction measures the

Our last series of posts on Rule 18f-4 have struggled to understand how its Limited Derivatives User requirements are supposed to work. We have done the best we could to explain the process for calculating a fund’s derivatives exposure, including determining the gross notional amount of derivatives transactions and adjustments thereto, excluding closed-out positions

This post will address another ambiguity in the “10% buffer” Rule 18f-4 provides for excluding the notional amount of derivative transactions that hedge currency or interest rate risks (“Hedging Derivatives”) when calculating the Derivatives Exposure of a Limited Derivatives User. The ambiguity is whether, once the notional amount of a Hedging Derivative

By Stephen A. Keen and Andrew P. Cross 

Our last two posts surveyed what Rule 18f-4 and its adopting release (the “Release”) tell us about excluding currency and interest-rate derivatives from the derivatives exposure of a fund seeking to comply with the Limited Derivatives User requirements of Rule 18f-4(c)(4). The Release indicates that