A dividend income strategy considers the distribution of earnings to shareholders in cash, equity, or property. Unit trust dividends are usually paid out quartterly from interest generated by the fund’s investments.

Fixed income investors act as lenders of capital, issuing credit, using bonds (federal governments, local municipalities and major corporations), for which real return rates or periodic income are received at regular intervals and at reasonably predictable levels. Commonly used in some traditional investments to manage risk and at times a very efficient financial instrument.

Also referred to as a Long-Only equity strategy, involves taking long positions in equities, that are expected to appreciate in value. This approach will not employ derivatives or gearing for hedging purposes (unlike an equity long / short fund) and is considered very mainstream. This is one of the more common retail products across the unit trusts.

Indexation is a method of tracking a broad market index or a segment thereof thus replicating the performance of the designated index. Tracker funds are investable, appropriate, transparent and measurable. Two major risks to generating investment returns are emotion and costs; index funds mitigate both these risks.

A common equity long-short strategy that seeks to profit by matching long and short positions in different equities, expecting to avoid risk while able to exploit any momentum in the market. Market-neutral managers may also use other tools such as merger arbitrage, shorting sectors and so on.

Multi-asset funds have mandates that afford the fund manager the flexibility to invest in a broad range of asset classes (such as cash, equity or bonds, both domestic and offshore). The objective is to achieve consistent real returns and long-term capital growth through maximum exposure to equities during bull markets, while minimising exposure to equities in secular bear markets.

As the name implies, this seeks hedged returns through numerous asset classes: long-short, long only (equity), market neutral, event driven, merger arbitrage, fixed income and global macro. Collectively, they seek absolute returns with minimised risk and are typically reserved for the very experienced teams.

These are typically actively managed funds, investing in listed property shares, also considering REITS, financial instruments (leverage and derivatives), assets in liquid form and at times non-equity securities (bonds).

A structured product is an investment that provides a pre-defined investment outcome over a pre-determined period. Structured products typically provide returns linked to the performance of an equity index or interest rates and are tailored to provide capital growth with some level of capital protection.