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Trustees of General Electric’s pension invested about $100 million in a new exchange-traded fund that focuses on a market-neutral strategy.
GE’s
(ticker: GE) pension trust invested in the
Simplify Market Neutral Equity Long/Short
ETF (EQLS) in the third quarter. According to a form filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission by the trustees of the pension, the trust ended the period with 4,171,885 shares of the ETF, valued at $103.5 million. It hadn’t owned any at the end of the second quarter, which isn’t surprising since the ETF was only a little more than two weeks old at that point. The trust also owned 1.28 million GE shares as of Sept. 30, the same stake it had at June 30.
GE declined to comment on the trust’s investment. Simplify said it has a policy to not comment on client investments.
The ETF’s strategy is to “seek profit during both rising and falling equity markets,” according to the fund’s third-quarter fact sheet. The ETF “invests in baskets of global equity securities primarily through total return swaps that provide the returns, long or short, of a basket of common stocks.”
How’s the ETF doing? In the third quarter, it had a cumulative total return of 0.7%, which topped the 3.5% loss of its benchmark, the MSCI World Index, that includes large- and mid-cap companies in 23 developed markets. The ETF also topped the 3.6% drop in the
S&P 500 index
that quarter.
GE’s pension is a legacy operation. It has been closed to new entrants since Jan. 1, 2012.
Inside Scoop is a regular Barron’s feature covering stock transactions by corporate executives and board members—so-called insiders—as well as large shareholders, politicians, and other prominent figures. Due to their insider status, these investors are required to disclose stock trades with the Securities and Exchange Commission or other regulatory groups.
Write to Ed Lin at [email protected] and follow @BarronsEdLin
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