in Annual Fund Operating Expenses or in the example, affect the Fund's performance.
Principal Investment Strategy
The Index is designed to track the performance of seven of the leading NASDAQ listed companies, as identified by Indxx (the "Index Provider"). Equity securities and American Depositary Receipts ("ADRs") that have a free-float equivalent to at least 10% of total shares outstanding and a per share price less than $10,000 are eligible for inclusion in the Index. As of January 31, 2024, the Index Provider has determined the following securities will comprise the Index: Apple Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Alphabet, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., NVIDIA Corporation, Tesla, Inc., and Meta Platforms, Inc.
The Index is equally weighted and reconstituted and rebalanced quarterly.
As of January 31, 2024, the Index consisted of seven securities, which had a median market capitalization of $1.6 trillion, total capitalizations ranging from $597 billion to $3 trillion and were concentrated in the information technology sector, which includes business operations in the field of artificial intelligence applications and big data.
The Fund, under normal circumstances, invests at least 80% of the Fund's net assets (plus borrowing for investment purposes) in financial instruments, including swap agreements, futures contracts, or short positions, that, in combination, provide 1X daily inverse (opposite) or short exposure to the Index or to exchange-traded funds ("ETFs") that track the Index, consistent with the Fund's investment objective.
The components of the Index and the percentages represented by various sectors in the Index may change over time. The Fund will concentrate its investment in a particular industry or group of industries (i.e., hold 25% or more of its total assets in investments that provide inverse exposure to a particular industry or group of industries) to approximately the same extent as the Index is so concentrated.
The Fund may also gain inverse exposure by investing in a combination of financial instruments, such as swap agreements or futures agreements that provide short exposure to the Index, to a representative sample of the securities in the Index that has aggregate characteristics similar to those of the Index or to an ETF that tracks the same Index or a substantially similar index, or the Fund may short securities of the Index, or short an ETF that tracks the same Index or a substantially similar index. The Fund invests in derivatives as a substitute for directly shorting securities in order to gain inverse exposure to the Index or its components. When the Fund shorts securities, including the securities of another investment company, it borrows shares of that security or investment company, which it then sells. The Fund closes out a short sale by purchasing the security that it has sold short and returning that security to the entity that lent the security. On a day-to-day basis, the Fund is expected to hold money market funds, deposit accounts with institutions with high quality credit ratings (i.e. investment grade or higher), and/or short-term debt instruments that have terms-to-maturity of less than 397 days and exhibit high quality credit profiles, including U.S. government securities and repurchase agreements.
The Fund seeks to remain fully invested at all times consistent with its stated inverse investment objective, but may not always have inverse exposure to all of the securities in the Index, or its weighting of inverse exposure to securities or industries may be different from that of the Index. In addition, the Fund may have inverse exposure to securities, ETFs or financial instruments not included in the Index.
The Fund will attempt to achieve its investment objective without regard to overall market movement or the increase or decrease of the value of the securities in the Index. At the close of the markets each trading day, Rafferty rebalances the Fund's portfolio so that its exposure to the Index is consistent with the Fund's inverse investment objective. For example, if the Index has fallen on a given day, net assets of the Fund should rise, meaning that the Fund's exposure will need to be increased. Conversely, if the Index has risen on a given day, net assets of the Fund should fall, meaning the Fund's exposure will need to be reduced and that a shareholder should lose money, a result that is the opposite of traditional index tracking ETFs. This re-positioning strategy may result in high portfolio turnover. The terms "daily," "day," and "trading day," refer to the period from the close of the markets on one trading day to the close of the markets on the next trading day.
The Fund is "non-diversified," meaning that a relatively high percentage of its assets may be invested in a limited number of issuers of securities. Additionally, the Fund's investment objective is not a fundamental policy and may be changed by the Fund's Board of Trustees without shareholder approval.
Because of daily rebalancing and the compounding of each day's return over time, the return of the Fund for periods longer than a single day will be the result of each day's returns compounded over the period, which will very likely differ from -100% of the return of the Index over the same period. The Fund will lose money if the Index performance is flat over time, and as a result of daily rebalancing, the Index's volatility and the effects of compounding, it is even possible that the Fund will lose money over time while the Index's performance decreases over a period longer than a single day.
Principal Investment Risks
An investment in the Fund entails risk. The Fund may not achieve its inverse investment objective and there is a risk that you could lose all of your money invested in the Fund.The Fund is not a complete investment program. In addition, the Fund presents risks not traditionally associated with other mutual funds and ETFs. It is important that investors closely review all of the risks listed below and understand them before making an investment in the Fund. The realization of certain of the risks described below may result in adverse market movements that may actually benefit the Fund due to its inverse investment objective.
Shorting or Inverse Risk - The Fund will lose money when the value of the Index rises because of the Fund's inverse or short exposure - this result is the opposite from a traditional index fund. The Fund's assets will increase in value when the Index's value falls. The Fund's assets will decrease in value when the Index's value increases. Because historically most assets have risen in value over the long