Investment objective & strategy
As of April 29, 2025 · prospectusObjective. The Fund?s investment objective is to seek total return consisting of capital appreciation and income.
Strategy. The Fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by primarily investing in agency and non-agency residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities, with a focus on non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities. Non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities are collateralized by pools of residential mortgages which are not insured by government sponsored enterprises or agencies (such as Federal National Mortgage Association (?FNMA?), Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (?FHLMC?) and Government National Mortgage Association (?GNMA?). The Fund?s non-agency mortgage-backed securities investments have a wide variety of payment characteristics and preferences and can have fixed or floating interest rates. The Fund may also invest in collateralized debt obligations (?CDOs?), collateralized loan obligations (?CLOs?) and other asset-backed securities, including those backed by credit card receivables, auto loans, aircraft leases … The Fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by primarily investing in agency and non-agency residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities, with a focus on non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities. Non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities are collateralized by pools of residential mortgages which are not insured by government sponsored enterprises or agencies (such as Federal National Mortgage Association (?FNMA?), Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (?FHLMC?) and Government National Mortgage Association (?GNMA?). The Fund?s non-agency mortgage-backed securities investments have a wide variety of payment characteristics and preferences and can have fixed or floating interest rates. The Fund may also invest in collateralized debt obligations (?CDOs?), collateralized loan obligations (?CLOs?) and other asset-backed securities, including those backed by credit card receivables, auto loans, aircraft leases and student loans. The Fund?s investment sub-advisor, ESM Management, LLC (the ?Sub-Advisor?), will allocate the Fund?s investments to asset classes that it views as offering the best values in the marketplace on a relative (risk-adjusted) basis at that time. The Sub-Advisor seeks to identify, through its own proprietary research and analysis, investments that it believes are undervalued and/or have the potential to achieve an above-market yield over the longer term. The investment strategy also seeks to identify ?special situations? within fixed income markets, particularly the market for non-agency mortgage-backed securities, where the Fund will make opportunistic investments in securities that may be mispriced due to structural or market driven factors. In this regard, the Sub-Advisor seeks to identify complexities, inefficiencies or flaws in the underlying legal and technical structures of certain debt issuances that the Sub-Advisor believes may have gone unnoticed by, or that are being misunderstood by, other market participants, such that the market is undervaluing the expected return. These opportunities that the Sub-Advisor seeks to identify may come in the form of flaws of logic or interpretation in a debt security?s pooling and servicing agreements or bond indentures. The Sub-Advisor seeks to identify and then exploit these opportunities while seeking to limit downside exposure. The Sub-Advisor will seek to remedy issues it has identified in the security through activist strategies, including, in cases where the investment?s cash flows are not being directed properly: (i) bringing the technical issue to the attention of indenture trustees or servicers; (ii) negotiating with the applicable parties to compensate the Fund for the issue; or (iii) through litigation or the threat of litigation. Once a potential special situation investment is identified, the Sub-Advisor estimates various factors, including the investment?s anticipated baseline return, potential upside, probability of upside scenario, and investment horizon. Based on this analysis and the market opportunity in terms of outstanding issue size and ability to source the security, the Fund?s investment will be sized based on the Sub-Advisor?s discretion. The implementation of the Sub-Advisor?s ?special situations? activist strategies will from time to time cause the Fund to incur special litigation expenses, and the success of the strategies, including recovery of such expenses through the receipt of settlement or judgment amounts, may not occur or may involve longer time frames than originally expected. Investors that redeem shares of the Fund prior to the Fund?s realization of desired investment returns or recovery of litigation expenses may not experience the full intended benefit of the activist strategy and may not experience the same investment returns as investors that did not redeem their shares. The Fund does not limit its investments to a particular credit quality and may invest without limitation in debt securities rated below investment grade (commonly referred to as ?junk? bonds). Below investment grade securities include those rated, at the time of purchase, below Baa3 by Moody?s Investor Services or equivalently by another nationally recognized statistical rating organization (?NRSRO?), as well as non-rated securities determined by the Sub-Advisor to be of comparable quality. The securities underlying the mortgage- and asset-backed securities in which the Fund invests may include distressed debt securities (i.e., underlying loans and assets that are in default or likely to default). An NRSRO will consider the underlying loans or assets collateralizing a mortgage- or asset-backed security when determining the credit rating of such security. The Sub-Advisor will also consider the security?s credit rating when evaluating the security for investment by the Fund. In managing the Fund?s investments, the Sub-Advisor seeks to construct an investment portfolio with a weighted average maturity that ranges between 1 and 30 years and a weighted average effective duration that ranges between -9 and 9 years. Duration measures the price sensitivity of a fixed income security to changes in interest rates. Effective duration is a measure of the Fund?s portfolio duration adjusted for the anticipated effect of interest rate changes on bond and mortgage pre-payment rates. Certain mortgage-related securities in which the Fund may invest, such as interest-only securities and related derivatives, have ?negative duration.? This means that the value of these instruments normally increases as interest rates increase, unlike most other debt instruments. This generally allows some portion of the portfolio?s market risk to be hedged with a purchase, rather than a short sale, and allows the portfolio to realize positive cash flows on the hedge as a result of interest received with respect to that security. The Fund may also invest in U.S. Treasury and agency securities, structured notes, and over-the-counter and exchange-traded derivative instruments. The Fund will use derivatives for hedging purposes. The Fund may hedge against rising interest rates through interest rate swaps, interest rate-linked futures and call and put options on interest rate futures. The Fund may hedge against rising default rates through credit default swaps, total return swaps linked to an asset or asset class representative of the default risks faced by the Fund, and credit spread options. The Fund concentrates its investments in the mortgage-backed securities industry, which includes agency and non-agency mortgage-backed securities. Distribution Policy: The Fund?s distribution policy is to make monthly distributions to shareholders. The Fund may, at the discretion of management, target a specific level of monthly distributions (including any return of capital) from time to time. Shareholders receiving periodic payments from the Fund may be under the impression that they are receiving net profits. However, all or a portion of a distribution may consist of a return of capital. Shareholders should not assume that the source of a distribution from the Fund is net profit. For more information about the Fund?s distribution policy, please turn to ?Additional Information About the Fund?s Principal Investment Strategies and Related Risks Principal Investment Strategies Rational Special Situations Income Fund - Distribution Policy and Goals? section in this Prospectus.
Top holdings
As of March 31, 2026 · N-PORT| Security | Ticker | Value | % of fund |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMBAC ASSURANCE CORP SUBORDINATED 144A 12/99 5.1 | ABK | $124.63M | 9.57% |
| FIRST AM-TR OB-X | TMPXX | $61.81M | 4.74% |
| WFLD 2014-MONT Mortgage Trust | — | $26.94M | 2.07% |
| MBI 0 12/15/33 | — | $24.84M | 1.91% |
| COMM Mortgage Trust, Series 2012-CR3, Class B | — | $20.95M | 1.61% |
| J.P. Morgan Chase Commercial Mortgage Securities Trust, Series 2012-C6, Class E | — | $20.84M | 1.60% |
| Commercial Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates, Series 2012-LTRT, Class A2 | COMM | $19.76M | 1.52% |
| CG-CCRE Commercial Mortgage Trust 2014-FL1 | — | $13.07M | 1.00% |
| WFRBS 2013-C14 C | — | $12.76M | 0.98% |
| DBALT 2007-AR3 1A2 | — | $12.53M | 0.96% |
Portfolio moves
Dec 31, 2025 → Mar 31, 2026How 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.
Similar funds
Funds whose portfolios most overlap this one, by weight| Fund | Overlap | Net exp. |
|---|---|---|
| Catalyst Insider Income Fund · IIXAX, IIXCX, IIXIX | 10% | 0.76% |
| Loomis Sayles Full Discretion Institutional Securitized Fund | 6% | 0.20% |
| AlphaCentric Real Income Fund · SIIIX, SIIAX, SIICX | 5% | 1.51% |
Advisers
| Firm | Role |
|---|---|
| Rational Advisors, Inc. | Adviser |
| ESM Management, LLC | Sub-adviser |
Footnotes
- Expense ratio as of April 29, 2025, from the fund's prospectus.
- Net assets and holdings count as of March 31, 2026, from the fund's N-PORT filing.
- 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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