Photo by: John Dixon/The News-Gazette

Greg Cozad, left, president and CEO of The Cozad Small Cap Value Fund, left, and David Wetherell, portfolio manager, stand in the lobby of the Cozad Asset Management office in Champaign on Thursday August 28, 2014.

Firm says effort is only publicly traded mutual fund managed in county

CHAMPAIGN Cozad Asset Management has launched what it believes is the only publicly traded mutual fund managed in Champaign County.

The fund, known as the Cozad Small Cap Value Fund, began trading July 1 under the ticker symbol COZIX.

Its investment strategy is heavily based on "behavioral finance" research done by former University of Illinois finance Professor David Ikenberry.

The fund resulted from a relationship formed several years ago by Ikenberry and Greg Cozad, the CEO of Cozad Asset Management.

The Cozad fund invests in about 100 "small-cap" companies those with market capitalizations of less than $3 billion that are considered good values. Typically, those are businesses with low price-to-earnings ratios.

Portfolio manager David Wetherell helped launch the strategy in July 2007, and three years later, the company opened it to accredited investors generally, people whose net worth, excluding primary residence, exceeds $1 million or whose annual income exceeds $200,000.

Now that the mutual fund is publicly traded, it's open to all investors.

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