AEDFX
Water Island Event-Driven Fund
ARBITRAGE FUNDS
Expense ratio1
1.71%
Net assets2
$50.13M
Holdings2
75
Category
US Equity
2025 return3
8.41%

Investment objective & strategy

As of Sept. 26, 2025 · prospectus

Objective. The Fund seeks to achieve capital growth.

Strategy. The Fund invests in equity and debt and debt-like instruments (including high yield bonds commonly known as "junk bonds") of companies whose prices the Fund's investment adviser (the "Adviser") believes are or will be impacted by a corporate event. Specifically, the Fund employs investment strategies designed to capture price movements generated by corporate events such as mergers, acquisitions, asset sales, restructurings, refinancings, recapitalizations, reorganizations, or other special situations (referred to as "event-driven opportunities"). The Fund may invest in both U.S. and foreign securities and may invest in securities of companies of any market capitalization and in debt securities of any maturity. The Fund may also invest in derivatives, such as options and swaps. Furthermore, the Fund may invest in exchange … The Fund invests in equity and debt and debt-like instruments (including high yield bonds commonly known as "junk bonds") of companies whose prices the Fund's investment adviser (the "Adviser") believes are or will be impacted by a corporate event. Specifically, the Fund employs investment strategies designed to capture price movements generated by corporate events such as mergers, acquisitions, asset sales, restructurings, refinancings, recapitalizations, reorganizations, or other special situations (referred to as "event-driven opportunities"). The Fund may invest in both U.S. and foreign securities and may invest in securities of companies of any market capitalization and in debt securities of any maturity. The Fund may also invest in derivatives, such as options and swaps. Furthermore, the Fund may invest in exchange traded funds ("ETFs"). The Adviser expects the Fund's assets to be invested in various industries; however, if, for example, a large percentage (namely, at least 50%) of corporate events taking place within the U.S. are within one industry over a given period of time, a large portion of the Fund's assets could be concentrated in that industry for that period of time. The Fund may utilize investment strategies such as merger arbitrage, convertible arbitrage, capital structure arbitrage, and special situations in order to profit from event-driven opportunities. These investment strategies are described more fully below. Merger Arbitrage: Merger arbitrage is a highly specialized investment approach designed to profit from the successful completion of mergers, takeovers, tender offers, leveraged buyouts, spin-offs, liquidations, and other corporate reorganizations. The most common merger arbitrage activity, and the approach the Fund generally uses, involves purchasing the shares of an announced acquisition target company at a discount to their expected value upon completion of the acquisition. The Fund may engage in selling securities short when the terms of a proposed acquisition call for the exchange of common stock and/or other securities. In such a case, the securities of the company to be acquired may be purchased and, at approximately the same time, an amount of the acquiring company's common stock and/or other securities as per the terms of the transaction may be sold short. Convertible Arbitrage: Convertible arbitrage is a specialized strategy that seeks to profit from pricing inefficiencies between a firm's convertible securities and its underlying equity. The most common convertible arbitrage approach, and the strategy the Fund generally uses, matches a long position in the convertible security with a short position in the underlying common stock. The Fund seeks to purchase convertible securities at discounts to their expected future values and sell short shares of the underlying common stock in order to mitigate equity market movements. As stock prices rise and the convertible security becomes more equity sensitive, the Fund may sell short additional common shares in order to maintain the relationship between the convertible and the underlying common stock. As stock prices fall, the Fund will typically buy back a portion of shares which it had sold short. Positions are typically designed to earn income from coupon or dividend payments and net gains from the purchase and sale of the convertible securities' positions and the underlying common stocks. Capital Structure Arbitrage: Capital structure arbitrage seeks to profit from relative pricing discrepancies between related debt and/or equity securities. For example, when the Fund believes that unsecured securities are overvalued in relation to senior secured securities, the Fund may purchase a senior secured security of an issuer and sell short an unsecured security of the same issuer. In this example the trade would be profitable if credit quality spreads widened or if the issuer went bankrupt and the recovery rate for the senior debt was higher than anticipated. Another example might involve the Fund purchasing one class of common stock while selling short a different class of common stock of the same issuer. It is expected that, over time, the relative mispricing of the securities may decline, at which point the position will be liquidated. Special Situations: The special situations strategy seeks to profit by investing in securities of companies whose stock price trades significantly higher or lower from where the Adviser believes they should trade, as the result of an ongoing or anticipated corporate catalyst. Corporate catalysts may include spin-offs, split-offs, asset sales, speculative mergers and acquisitions, transformational mergers and acquisitions, Dutch tenders (whereby an offer is made to purchase securities within a given price range through an auction structure, wherein shareholders are invited to sell shares over a specific time period by specifying the lowest price within the range that they will accept), regulatory changes, recapitalizations, refinancings, corporate levering/de-levering, un-solicited hostile offers, litigation, bankruptcy processes, distressed credit, and other catalysts. The strategy invests primarily in equity securities, but may also invest in debt, warrants, debentures, convertible securities, and preferred securities. The strategy may engage in short sales and derivatives to implement trading strategies and to mitigate volatility and market risk. The Fund generally engages in active and frequent trading of portfolio securities to achieve its principal investment objective. The Fund may sell or close out a security when the securities of the companies involved in the transaction no longer meet the Fund's expected return criteria when gauged by prevailing market prices and the relative risks of the situation. The Fund may hold a significant portion of its assets in cash, money market or similar cash management funds, or short-term investments for defensive purposes, to preserve the Fund's ability to capitalize quickly on new market opportunities, or for other reasons, such as because the Adviser has determined to obtain investment exposure through derivative instruments instead of direct cash investments. The Fund may also hold a significant amount of cash or short-term investments immediately after a period in which several transactions in which the Fund has invested close in a similar timeframe, yet before capital is redeployed to other opportunities. The Fund may, but is not required to, seek to reduce currency risk by hedging part or all of its exposure to various foreign currencies. The Fund is non-diversified, which means that it may invest a greater portion of its assets in one or a limited number of issuers and may invest overall in a smaller number of issuers than a diversified fund.

Top holdings

As of Feb. 28, 2026 · N-PORT
SecurityTickerValue% of fund
FYBR 8.75 05/15/30 144A FYBR $2.80M 5.58%
JANUS HENDERSON GROUP PLC $2.38M 4.74%
ELECTRONIC ARTS INC $2.17M 4.32%
HOLOGIC INC $2.11M 4.20%
EXACT SCIENCES CORP $2.05M 4.09%
ENDEAVOR GROUP HOLDINGS INC $1.99M 3.97%
WARNER BROS DISCOVERY INC $1.93M 3.85%
SATS 6.75 11/30/30 SATS $1.88M 3.76%
PENUMBRA INC $1.65M 3.29%
CHART INDUSTRIES INC $1.49M 2.98%
View all holdings →

Allocation by sector

As of February 28, 2026 · N-PORT
View portfolio breakdown →

Portfolio moves

Nov 30, 2025 → Feb 28, 2026
Opened
45
Exited
35
Increased
6
Decreased
15
Unchanged
21

How many positions this fund opened, exited, grew, trimmed, or left unchanged between its two most recent N-PORT snapshots — net changes between point-in-time reports, not a trade log.

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Similar funds

Funds whose portfolios most overlap this one, by weight
FundOverlapNet exp.
AltShares Event-Driven ETF · EVNT 74% 1.33%
THE ARBITRAGE FUND · ARBFX, ARBNX, ARBCX, ARGAX 71% 1.46%
AltShares Merger Arbitrage ETF · ARB 44% 0.76%
View all similar funds →

Advisers

As of May 31, 2025 · N-CEN
FirmRole
Water Island Capital, LLC Adviser

Footnotes

  1. Expense ratio as of September 26, 2025, from the fund's prospectus.
  2. Net assets and holdings count as of February 28, 2026, from the fund's N-PORT filing.
  3. Total return for calendar year 2025, before tax and after fund expenses. Computed by compounding the twelve monthly total returns the fund reported in its SEC N-PORT filings for 2025 (the latest prospectus does not yet chart this year).

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