In her recent article, “Pause for thought: Gatekeepers consider interval funds,” Vicky Ge Huang explores the recent surge in investor demand for interval funds. She explains that this newfound interest is largely driven by the interval fund’s accessibility to a broad spectrum of investors and its ability to house a wide variety of asset classes. Most notably, interval funds provide a favorable structure for alternative investments.
Interval funds are able to invest in these institutional-caliber assets because they have lower liquidity requirements than mutual funds. While illiquidity can result in higher returns and lower volatility, it also creates additional risk.
In the article, Kimberly Flynn, XA Investments Managing Director of Alternative Investments, suggests there are implications resulting from the interval fund’s less liquid structure, which should be carefully considered. Flynn describes the quarterly tender feature of interval funds as a “gate.” This gate gives shareholders the opportunity to exit the fund once every quarter, but if there are more tenders or “exits” than subscriptions, the gate closes. For this reason, investors in interval funds must properly consider both benefits and risks.
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