Portfolio Turnover
The Fund pays transaction costs, such as commissions, when it buys and sells
securities (or “turns over” its portfolio). A higher portfolio turnover rate may indicate higher transaction costs and may result in higher taxes when Fund shares are held in a taxable account. These costs, which are not reflected in
annual fund operating expenses or in the example, affect the Fund’s performance. During the most recent fiscal year, the Fund’s portfolio turnover rate was 44% of the average value of its portfolio, including TBA Transactions (as defined
below), and 22% of the average value of its portfolio (excluding TBA Transactions).
Principal Investment Strategies of the Fund
The Fund employs a “passive management” – or indexing – investment approach designed to track the performance of the Index. The
Fund generally uses a representative sampling strategy to achieve its investment objective, meaning it generally will invest in a sample of the securities in the Index whose risk, return and other characteristics resemble the risk, return and other
characteristics of the Index as a whole. Under normal circumstances, at least 80% of the Fund’s total assets (exclusive of collateral held from securities lending) will be invested in component securities of the Index and investments that have
economic characteristics that are substantially identical to the economic characteristics of such component securities.
The Index is designed to broadly capture the short-term U.S.
investment grade, fixed income securities market while seeking to enhance yield within desired risk parameters and constraints. The Index is comprised of those subgroups of the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate Index (i.e., Treasuries, agencies, credit and securitized) with effective maturities generally shorter than five years (“ST Agg Universe”). The Index uses a rules-based approach to re-weight these subgroups to
achieve higher yields, while managing risk through constraints on expected tracking error and turnover, as well as sector, duration, and credit exposure relative to the market value-weighted ST Agg Universe. Individual securities within a subgroup
are market value-weighted within the subgroup. The Index is rebalanced on a monthly basis.
The Index draws from the ST Agg Universe, which consists of
U.S. dollar-denominated securities, including U.S. Treasuries, U.S. Government-related bonds, corporate bonds, mortgage-backed pass-through securities, commercial mortgage-backed securities, and asset-backed securities that are publicly offered for
sale in the United States. These securities feature fixed rate coupons and have at least $300 million in par amount outstanding and one year to final maturity, with the exception of asset-backed securities and commercial mortgage-backed securities,
which must have an original deal size of $500 million, a minimum tranche size of $25 million, and at least $300 million of the original transaction still outstanding.
The duration of the Index is generally expected not to exceed
the duration of the ST Agg Universe by more than 0.5 years. The ST Agg Universe has historically had a duration range between approximately two and three years. Duration is a measure used to determine the sensitivity of a portfolio to changes in
interest rates with a longer duration portfolio being more sensitive to changes in interest rates. For example, the value of a fund with a portfolio duration of three years would be expected to drop by 3% for every 1% increase in interest
rates.
The Index includes U.S. agency mortgage-backed
pass-through securities, which are securities issued by entities such as Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (“FHLMC”) and Federal National Mortgage Association (“FNMA”) that are backed by pools of mortgages. Most
transactions in mortgage-backed pass-through securities occur through standardized contracts for future delivery in which the exact mortgage pools to be delivered are not specified until a few days prior to settlement, referred to as a
“to-be-announced transaction” or “TBA Transaction.” In a TBA Transaction, the buyer and seller agree upon general trade parameters such as agency, settlement date, par amount and price. The actual pools delivered generally
are determined two days prior to the settlement date; however, it is not anticipated that the Fund will receive pools, but instead will participate in rolling TBA Transactions. The Fund expects to enter into such contracts on a regular basis. The
Fund, pending settlement of such contracts, will invest its assets in high-quality, liquid short-term instruments.
The Fund may invest up to 20% of its assets in other fixed
income securities and/or such other investments, with characteristics similar to the Index constituents, that the Adviser and/or Sub-Adviser believe will help the Fund track the performance of the Index. Other fixed income securities will consist
primarily of investment grade securities with similar risk characteristics as the Index components, but up to 5% of the Fund’s total assets may be held in non-investment grade securities (“junk bonds”) with credit ratings deemed to
be of no less than BB.