Shariah compliant green fund launched

An environmental and Shariah-compliant und has been launched by Da Vinci Invest of Zurich Green. Known as the Falcon Fund, it will invest in the carbon markets and forestry.

The carbon markets are steadily growing and are characterised by recurring inefficiencies, enabling a range of arbitrage strategies.

The fund will work closely with advisors to use halal (permissible under Islamic laws) trading strategies. It will concentrate on the more vanilla structures and strategies.

The fund will actively trade the carbon markets on a short-term basis and invest in forestry for the long term. Da Vinci Invest expects this strategy provide consistent value growth, diversification and an environmental benefit. Rainforest Invest, Forest Finance and Miller Forest will source opportunities in Panama, Costa Rica and Paraguay.

Only land formerly used for agricultural will be planted. No rainforest will be cut to farm the plantations. The Da Vinci Green Falcon Fund will charge a 2% management fee and a 20% incentive fee.

Da Vinci Invest, incorporated in 2004 as a UK company, is based in Zug. Da Vinci Invest's multi-strategy platform includes Volatility Arbitrage, long/short gamma strategies, gamma scalping and automated arbitrage trading. The portfolio is primarily delta neutral and hedged against rising or falling markets.

Da Vinci Invest employs different trading strategies to benefit from various forms of anomalies in the volatility of several underlying products. Spread trading accounts for 70% of our trading strategy (pairs trading and volatility spreads where the implied volatility of an option is inconsistent with its historical volatility or recent implied volatility). Its proprietary statistical models and automated trading robots monitor global markets and exploit situations where unexpected events push derivative prices unreasonably high or low.