Lanson Optima Fund

Price:	$0.683
Price date:	20/11/08

A medium risk fund of funds selected from the world population of over 8000 mutual funds. The funds selected are mostly equity funds, but allocations can be made to bonds. The fund makes a number of broad based allocations and uses a computer driven stop loss strategy. It is available to monthly savers and for lump sums.

The custodian is Friends Provident International Ltd in the Isle of Man. Therefore it is only available through one of the Friends Provident products. The fund is managed entirely by Lanson Financial Ltd (registered in the British Virgin Islands) using their unique stop loss strategy.

Objective:

• To maximise growth and then to protect the gains in future market downturns wherever possible using proprietary stop loss management. What is stop loss?
• To achieve greater growth than the index of world stock markets.

Strategy:

• The Optima Fund has access to over 8,500 mutual funds in addition to the range of Friends Provident International Ltd offshore mirror funds. These are sorted into the major regions of the world every 2-3 months to select those have shown good growth in the recent past.
• The best performing funds from the 4 or 5 regions showing the best growth are selected for analysis.
• The Lanson Financial stop-loss models are then used to analyse and select the best funds from these regions
• The results are compared with the performance of the funds, which make up the fund at the time and adjustments made as necessary.
• To smooth the performance, the managers favour regional funds rather than country specific so they have a broader base.
• The prices of each investment are checked daily and if they drop beyond their stop loss level the fund is sold and money moved to a cash account.
• The fund may use 5% of its assets to hedge against losses.
• When the fund rises again by a sufficient amount to trigger a start-gain, the money is reinvested.
• The fund rebalances its assets every quarter to ensure that it is not over exposed to any one sector.
• There is a protection built into the fund such that if the Optima Fund price drops more than 7.5% from its latest high point, then the manager will move at least 30% of the assets to cash. If there are further drops in the fund price than another 30% of the invested assets will be moved to cash for every 5% drop in the fund price

The Lanson Financial strategy is unique in that it offers investors a combination of several successful investment strategies.

Other Details:

Charges:	1.25% per anum
Currency:	USD
Dealing:	Weekly on a Thursday
Established:	May 1998, however the fund Manager changed and the strategy was enhanced in September 2001

This fund will be subject to volatility and may go down in value as well as increase. This risk is reduced the longer the investment is held. Past performance is no guarantee of future performance.