The Index is designed by Solactive AG (the “Index Provider”) to represent the securities of companies from the United States that have business operations in the field of artificial intelligence (“AI”) applications and big data.To be eligible for inclusion in the Index, all securities must fulfill the following:•Primarily listed in the United States;•Share class market capitalization of at least $100 million on the day the Index is rebalanced; and•Minimum average daily value traded of at least $5 million over one month and over six months prior to and including the day the Index is rebalanced.The Index Provider uses ARTIS®, its proprietary natural language processing algorithm, to identify and rank AI and big data companies for inclusion in the Index. ARTIS uses keywords to review large volumes of publicly available data, such as company annual reports, published business descriptions, and financial news reports, which the Index Provider believes will identify and classify companies as being in the field of AI and big data, and then ranks the companies based on the number of keyword “hits” in the company’s data. The ARTIS classification system is different than traditional classification systems because it utilizes natural language processing, such as keyword searching, whereas traditional classifications system utilize backward looking metrics, such as a company’s past profits or revenue, to determine the classification of a company. After companies are identified by utilizing ARTIS, they are then reviewed and are only eligible for inclusion in the Index if a company generates at least 50% of its revenue from one of the following business fields:•Artificial Intelligence (AI): This segment comprises companies involved in the provision of AI computing solutions, software for digital transformation, processors and services to a variety of industries such as media, services industry, pharmaceuticals and computers.•Data Analytics and Big Data: This segment focuses on companies involved in data-related technologies such as data mining, predictive analytics, and machine learning. It also comprises companies engaged in the provision of business specific process management and business solutions based on influent amounts of data and data analytics.•Natural Language Processing: This segment focuses specifically on companies involved in delivering natural language processing using data analytics and/or AI programs, speech recognition, semantic networks, ontology engineering, and logic programming. It also includes the provision of algorithm-based solutions for machine learning.•AI-Driven Services: This segment includes companies that develop and use AI-powered applications, such as chatbots, virtual assistants, predictive analytics, marketing technology and recommendation engines, as well as those that produce hardware and software components for AI systems, such as computer chips, graphics processing units, and specialized algorithms.Each company receives a score by ARTIS that reflects its exposure to the Index strategy and is then ranked by its score and the top 30 companies are selected for inclusion in the Index. The Index is rebalanced semi-annually.As of January 10, 2024, the Index was comprised of 30 constituents, which had a median total market capitalization of $31.35 billion, total market capitalizations ranging from $683 million to $2.879 trillion, and was concentrated in the information technology, communication services, consumer discretionary and industrials sectors.The Fund, under normal circumstances, invests at least 80% of the Fund’s net assets (plus borrowing for investment purposes) in financial instruments, including swap agreements, futures contracts, or short positions,that,in combination,provide 2X daily inverse (opposite) or short exposure to the Index or to exchange traded funds (“ETFs”) that track the Index, consistent with the Fund’s investment objective. The financial instruments in which the Fund most commonly invests are swap agreements and futures agreements which are intended to produce economically inverse leveraged investment results.The components of the Index and the percentages represented by various sectors in the Index may change over time. The Fund will concentrate its investment in a particular industry or group of industries (i.e., hold 25% or more of its total assets in investments that provide inverse leveraged exposure to a particular industry or group of industries) to approximately the same extent as the Index is so concentrated.The Fund may also gain inverse leveraged exposure by investing in a combination of financial instruments, such as swap agreements or futures agreements that provide short exposure to the Index, to a representative sample of the securities in the Index that has aggregate characteristics similar to those of the Index or to an ETF that tracks the same Index or a substantially similar index, or the Fund may short securities of the Index, or short an ETF that tracks the same Index or a substantially similar index. The Fund invests in derivatives as a substitute for directly shorting securities in order to gain inverse leveraged exposure to the Index or its components. When the Fund shorts securities, including the securities of another investment company, it borrows shares of that security or investment company, which it then sells. The Fund closes out a short sale by purchasing the security that it has sold short and returning that security to the entity that lent the security. On a day-to-day basis, the Fund is expected to hold money market funds, deposit accounts with institutions with high quality credit ratings (i.e. investment grade or higher), and/or short-term debt instruments that have terms-to-maturity of less than 397 days and exhibit high quality credit profiles, including U.S. government securities and repurchase agreements.The Fund seeks to remain fully invested at all times consistent with its stated inverse leveraged investment objective, but may not always have inverse exposure to all of the securities in the Index, or its weighting of inverse exposure to securities or industries may be different from that of the Index. In addition, the Fund may have inverse exposure to securities, ETFs or financial instruments not included in the Index.The Fund will attempt to achieve its investment objective without regard to overall market movement or the increase or decrease of the value of the securities in the Index. At the close of the markets each trading day, Rafferty rebalances the Fund’s portfolio so that its exposure to the Index is consistent with the Fund’s inverse leveraged investment objective. For example, if the Index has fallen on a given day, net assets of the Fund should rise, meaning that the Fund’s exposure will need to be increased. Conversely, if the Index has risen on a given day, net assets of the Fund should fall, meaning the Fund’s exposure will need to be reduced and that a shareholder should lose money, a result that is the opposite of traditional index tracking ETFs. This re-positioning strategy may result in high portfolio turnover. The terms “daily,” “day,” and “trading day,” refer to the period from the close of the markets on one trading day to the close of the markets on the next trading day.The Fund is “non-diversified,” meaning that a relatively high percentage of its assets may be invested in a limited number of issuers of securities. Additionally, the Fund’s investment objective is not a fundamental policy and may be changed by the Fund’s Board of Trustees without shareholder approval.Because of daily rebalancing and the compounding of each day’s return over time, the return of the Fund for periods longer than a single day will be the result of each day’s returns compounded over the period, which will very likely differ from -200% of the return of the Index over the same period. The Fund will lose money if the Index performance is flat over time, and as a result of daily rebalancing, the Index’s volatility and the effects of compounding, it is even possible that the Fund will lose money over time while the Index’s performance decreases over a period longer than a single day.
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