Strategy Identification

The iterative development of the US and international equity strategy identification process began in 2005. The first step was an initial identification effort based on our collective knowledge of the industry. In the next step, equity managers, who managed or had managed a wide variety of equity funds, were interviewed in order to expand and refine the proposed identification system. Next, more than 40,000 pieces of strategy information was gathered from roughly 3,000 fund (ignoring share classes) prospectuses.

The resulting strategy information was grouped into elements which were then assigned to a particular strategy. Once the data organization process was complete, the primary and secondary strategies for each fund were identified. The entire process is embedded in a proprietary, carefully structured, patent-pending algorithm. This allows for an easy application to newly launched funds and other asset classes. AthenaInvest has strategy identified 93% of all US and international active open-end equity mutual funds. The unidentied funds either do not provide any strategy information in the prospectus (i.e. "We invest in attractive stocks.") or we were unable to locate a prospectus after many attempts.

ETFs, index, balanced, asset allocation, 529, and lifestyle funds are not strategy identified either because they are not active or the funds include multiple asset classes.