Fund Evaluator:

Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst Overview

Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst (CZAMX) is an actively managed Alternative Multistrategy fund. Columbia Threadneedle launched the fund in 2017.

The investment seeks capital appreciation with an emphasis on absolute (positive) returns. The manager pursues the fund's investment objective by allocating the fund's assets among different asset managers that use multiple investment styles and strategies across different markets. The Investment Manager and the Subadvisers employ a variety of investment strategies, techniques and practices that are designed to seek positive returns, with a low correlation to the performance of the broad equity and fixed income markets over a complete market cycle. The fund may invest in early stage companies and initial public offerings (IPOs).

About Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst (CZAMX)

There are 19 members of the management team with an average tenure of 4.40 years: Bryan Whalen (2017), Philippe Lüdi (2018), Grant Jaffarian (2022), Alexander Healy (2018), Kisoo Park (2017), Jerry Cudzil (2023), David Bees (2026), Bradley Lutz (2022), Christopher Chapman (2017), Kathryn Kaminski (2018), Michael Pomada (2022), Steven Purdy (2023), Ruben Hovhannisyan (2023), Ryan Dean (2026), Michael Levitin (2026), Tansu Demirbilek (2025), Christopher Smith (2026), Kelly Lim (2026), Thomas Goggins (2017). Management tenure is more important for actively managed funds than passive index funds.

The fund has 2 primary benchmarks: Bloomberg Global Aggregate TR USD index with a weighting of 100% and FTSE Treasury Bill 3 Mon USD index with a weighting of 100%. Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst has 1450 securities in its portfolio. The top 10 holdings constitute 49.6% of the fund’s assets. The fund meets the SEC requirement of being classified as a diversified fund. The fund is not considered to have an ESG focus with its investment selection and management.

Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst is part of the Alternative Strategies global asset class and is within the Alternative fund group. Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst has -29.8% of its portfolio invested in foreign issues. The overall assets allocated to domestic stock is 4.2%. There is 4.8% allocated to foreign stock, and 2.1% is allocated to preferred stocks. The bond allocation as a percentage of total assets is -0.8% (33.8% domestic bond, -34.6% foreign bond and 0.9% convertible bond). Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst has 83.7% of the portfolio in cash.

Assets Under Management

The fund has $606 million in total assets, which is above the $499 million average for the Multistrategy category. Normally, lower assets under management translates to higher average expense ratios, and greater total assets are desired. However, for some investment categories, such as small-cap investing, it may be difficult for the manager to fully employ the desired active strategy if assets grow too large or too quickly.

CZAMX Performance and Fees

The expense ratio measures how much of a fund’s assets are used for administrative expenses and operating expenses, including adviser fees and fees for the transfer agent and custodial services. The Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst expense ratio is high compared to funds in the Multistrategy category. Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst has an expense ratio of 1.28%, which is 38% lower than its category average, making the fund expense ratio grade a B. While it is difficult to predict returns, it is known that high annual expense ratios reduce your rate of return, and excessive fees are difficult to overcome. Active management normally comes with higher expense ratios than passive index management. Certain investment categories such as small company and foreign also normally have higher expense ratios. It is best to compare fund expense ratios against the category averages for meaningful assessments.

High portfolio turnover can translate to higher expenses and lower aftertax returns. Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst has a portfolio turnover rate of 126%, indicating that holds its assets around 0.0 years. By way of comparison, the average portfolio turnover is 292% for the Multistrategy category.

Recently, in the month of June 2026, Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst returned -0.8%, which earned it a grade of D, as the Multistrategy category had an average return of -0.1%. The letter grades of A, B, C, D and F are based upon relative rankings within the investment category. A grade of A, for example, would indicate that the return is in the highest 20% for that time period compared to all funds in that category.

Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst has a trailing yield of 3.10%, which is above the 2.90% category average. The fund normally distributes its income annually.

It’s natural to seek the best-performing investments, but you must consider the relationship between risk and return and the impact of costs and taxes on your realized returns.

Multi-Manager Alternative Strat Inst Grades

Year to date, the fund has returned 3.4%, 1.0 percentage points worse than the category, which translates into a grade of D. The fund has returned 8.6% over the past year (grade of D), 3.9% over the past three years (grade of F) and 2.9% per year over the past five years (grade of F) and 2.3% per year over the past 10 years (grade of F).

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