Enter the Global Markets Fund I: an all-weather, absolute-return strategy designed not only to protect capital, but to systematically participate in upside through disciplined, asymmetric positioning. The Fund’s premise is simple yet powerful – in markets ruled by uncertainty, consistency is the rarest alpha.

Built for stability without sacrificing ambition, Global Markets Fund I is engineered to act as a liquid, low-volatility complement to Arbra’s longer-term private-market portfolios. Within a broader asset-allocation framework, it functions as a dynamic counterbalance – one that offers daily liquidity, precision control over downside risk, and an embedded mechanism for capturing opportunity in volatility. It is not designed to chase markets, but to compound through them.

At the heart of the strategy lies a proprietary construct known as an Atom – a modular investment unit that fuses directional exposure with built-in protection. Each Atom combines three components: a long position in a high-quality stock (typically within the S&P 500), a protective put option purchased on the same stock, and a call option sold to partially finance the hedge. The result is a self-contained risk-reward engine, designed to behave predictably across market regimes.

Every Atom is engineered to deliver a convex payoff profile – capturing meaningful upside (typically 10–15 per cent per annum) while limiting downside to roughly –5 per cent. This structure seeks a 4-to-1 ratio of potential gain to risk, aligning with institutional definitions of asymmetry. Atoms are actively managed, dynamically rebalanced, and continually reinvested to crystallise gains and reset at stronger entry points, turning short-term volatility into long-term compounding fuel.

When markets dislocate or volatility spikes, the Fund’s puts appreciate in value, allowing it to harvest profits and redeploy into new Atoms at lower valuations. Paradoxically, this means that disorder creates opportunity. Volatility ceases to be an external threat and instead becomes an internal mechanism – a tool for disciplined reinvestment and incremental improvement.

At any given time, the Fund holds 20 to 25 Atoms, each representing 3 to 5 per cent of NAV, with typical maturities ranging from three to six months. All underlying options are exchange-traded, highly liquid, and free of counterparty credit risk. The result is a portfolio that is diversified, transparent, and mathematically defined to remain within a controlled performance corridor of roughly –5 to +15 per cent annualised – a range that reflects deliberate design rather than market accident.

This precision is reinforced through a second layer of protection: an index-level overlay using S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100 options. These hedges are deployed tactically – usually costing less than 0.5 per cent of NAV – to smooth aggregate exposure and neutralise systemic drawdowns that might arise from correlated moves among individual Atoms. Together, these mechanisms create a responsive structure that continuously adjusts to market conditions while preserving the Fund’s risk discipline.

By design, this layered architecture ensures that gains in individual Atoms do not inadvertently increase vulnerability at the portfolio level. The result is a system of controlled asymmetry – one that aligns elegant engineering with practical resilience, capturing opportunity while insulating against the extremes of market behaviour.

In both live and simulated performance, the Global Markets Fund I has demonstrated the stability it was designed to deliver – capturing returns with significantly reduced volatility. Through the end of April 2025, the Fund generated a 6 per cent gross return, outperforming the S&P 500 by 12 percentage points during a period marked by geopolitical shocks and liquidity rotation. Its behaviour through stress regimes has validated its purpose: consistency, not correlation.

During 2024, the Fund delivered 11.9 per cent gross returns versus 23.0 per cent for the S&P 500, with annualised volatility of just 6.5 per cent compared with the index’s 16.4 per cent. This underscores the core thesis – equity-like participation at a fraction of the volatility. The Fund is benchmarked to SOFR and domiciled in the Cayman Islands. Management fees are performance-based and earned only on returns above benchmark, aligning risk with reward and conviction with accountability.

In a world where passive exposure feels increasingly passive-aggressive and traditional hedges have lost their potency, the Global Markets Fund I offers something rare – a strategy that thinks in asymmetries, adapts in real time, and behaves predictably across cycles. It transforms volatility from a condition to be endured into a resource to be managed. For investors allocating between private markets, core equities, and liquid alternatives, the fund is more than a volatility buffer; it is a liquid expression of discipline and design.

Ultimately, the Fund’s purpose is simple but timely: to convert market motion into measured progress. Through rigorous construction and active control, it demonstrates that in periods of uncertainty, the path to performance lies not in prediction, but in precision. In that sense, the Global Markets Fund I embodies what the modern investor demands most – tactical calm in volatile times.