Goldman Sachs New Long-Short Mutual Fund, a Retail Hedge Fund

By Jon C. Ogg September 30, 2014 Updated October 1, 2014

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) is one of the top brokerage firms and investment banking firms on Wall Street. The bulk of its clients are wealthy individuals and institutional investors. By and large the company has been inaccessible to most of the public, but that has been changing as the company has announced more fund products of late — and now Goldman Sachs Asset Management announced the launch of the Goldman Sachs Long Short Fund (GSEAX, GSLSX). In short, this is a hedge fund type of strategy that is structured under a regular mutual fund.

The new fund is said to pursue high conviction equity investment ideas, using a bottom-up approach while seeking to hedge market risk and limit volatility. GSAM’s Liquid Alternatives business has now expanded that platform to include seven funds, which seems to be more evidence that the group has selectively gone after broader classes of investors.

The fund is offered in Class A and C shares with $1,000 minimum initial investments, and it also offers Institutional, Class R and Class IR Shares. GSAM also recently launched its Liquid Alternatives Center to provide advisors and investors with educational materials and tools to help them effectively manage portfolios with allocations to liquid alternatives.

Goldman Sachs’ GSAM oversees some $1.14 trillion in assets as of June 30, 2014. The firm’s notice about the new fund said:

We seek to identify secular changes in industries, markets and consumer behavior that will positively or negatively impact companies. We are typically looking for investment opportunities with asymmetric risk/return profiles and identifiable catalysts. We strive to build a hedged portfolio with the flexibility and nimbleness to generate attractive performance in any market environment.

This is not exactly the type of news that would move a stock that is the size of Goldman Sachs (with its $84 billion market cap). That being said, this is one more avenue for the Dow Jones Industrial Average component to get in front of more potential customers — customers that aren’t just the one-percenters. More information and details on this fund will be available soon.

ALSO READ: 8 Analyst Stocks Under $10 With Massive Upside Calls