Voyager Asset Management Ltd. has launched a new fund, the VOYAGER US Treasury High Yield Fund Ltd. and listed it on the Bermuda Stock Exchange under symbol VOYUSTA BH.

Voyager is a subsidiary of Bermuda-based investment manager, Voyager Management (Bermuda) Ltd., which manages three offshore funds.

The principal objective of the fund is to accrue returns better than US Treasuries, while maintaining liquidity and managing investment risk, credit risk and volatility.

It will maintain a core portfolio of US Treasuries and employ a proprietary yield enhanced trading and hedging strategy utilising an overlay of US Treasury options/futures, known as the Defined Risk Capital Accumulation Programme (DRCAP).

The use of the option and future overlay is to profit from an expected change in the relationship between the option spreads.

Principals of the fund's advisor, Harvest Capital Management, who have traded US Treasury fixed income instruments as well as Treasury options and futures for more than 30 years, developed the proprietary DRCAP.

It was formulated from extensive analysis of the US bond market over a 25-year period. The returns earned by DRCAP are uncorrelated to either bonds or equities and hence are not dependent on the trend of interest rates or the behaviour of general market conditions.

Historically, the DRCAP has proven very successful in both a rising bond price environment (25.75 percent ROR net of fees in 1995), and in a falling bond price environment (27.78 percent ROR net of fees in 1996).

Harvest has averaged approximately 23.5 percent in annual net returns with the DRCAP. By November 30, the DRCAP had a net gain of 19.64 percent year to date.

Voyager said the VOYAGER US Treasury High Yield Fund will be a welcome opportunity for preservation of capital with an enhanced return objective in the current volatile equity and bond markets.