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Managed futures is a notion from
investment management. The concept is that a portfolio of
futures or
forwards on underliers such as commodities, foreign exchange or energies can
be implemented by institutional investors much like portfolios of
stocks or
bonds. Marketing literature for managed futures promotes such funds as an
"alternative asset category." This is a controversial notion.
An overlay strategy is a managed
futures portfolio that is added to an existing portfolio in order to introduce
new exposures to the portfolio. The strategy is called an overlay because the
futures or forwards require little or no initial funding. For this reason, they can
be "overlaid" on top of an existing portfolio without
requiring any reallocation of that portfolio's
capital. Currency overlay
strategies have, at times, proven especially popular.
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