GEM

About GEM

The Fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing at least 80% of its assets (exclusive of collateral held from securities lending) in securities included in its underlying index, in depositary receipts representing securities included in its underlying index and in underlying stocks in respect of depositary receipts included in its underlying index. The Index is designed to deliver exposure to equity securities of emerging market issuers. The Index is constructed using the patented ActiveBeta® Portfolio Construction Methodology, which was developed to provide exposure to the “factors” (or characteristics) that are commonly tied to a stock’s outperformance relative to market returns. These factors include value (i.e., how attractively a stock is priced relative to its “fundamentals,” such as book value and free cash flow), momentum (i.e., whether a company’s share price is trending up or down), quality (i.e., profitability) and low volatility (i.e., a relatively low degree of fluctuation in a company’s share price over time). Given the Fund’s investment objective of attempting to track its Index, the Fund does not follow traditional methods of active investment management, which may involve buying and selling securities based upon analysis of economic and market factors. Goldman Sachs Asset Management, L.P. (the “Index Provider”) constructs the Index in accordance with a rules-based methodology that involves two steps. Step 1 In the first step, individual factor subindexes for value, momentum, quality and low volatility (the “ActiveBeta® Factor Subindexes”) are created from the constituents of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index (the “Reference Index”), a market capitalization-weighted index. To construct each ActiveBeta® Factor Subindex, all constituents in the Reference Index are assigned a “factor score” based on certain specified measurements (for example, in the case of the value factor, the factor score is based on a composite of book value-to-price, sales-to-price and free cash flow-to-price). Securities with a factor score that is above a fixed “Cut-off Score” receive an overweight in the applicable ActiveBeta® Factor Subindex relative to the Reference Index and securities with a factor score that is below the Cut-off Score receive an underweight in the ActiveBeta® Factor Subindex relative to the Reference Index. Accordingly, the magnitude of overweight or underweight that a security receives in constructing the applicable ActiveBeta® Factor Subindex is determined by its attractiveness when evaluated based on the relevant factor. The Index only includes long positions (i.e., short positions are impermissible), so the smallest weight for any given security is zero. Step 2 The ActiveBeta® Factor Subindexes are combined in equal weights to form the Index. The Index is rebalanced on a quarterly basis in accordance with the published rebalancing schedule of the Reference Index. The rules-based process used to construct the Index incorporates the ActiveBeta® Turnover Minimization Technique, which seeks to reduce turnover within the Index. As of November 29, 2019, the Index consisted of 433 securities with a market capitalization range of between approximately $162 million and $535 billion from issuers in the following emerging market countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. The components of the Index may change over time. The percentage of the portfolio exposed to any asset class, country or geographic region will vary from time to time as the weightings of the securities within the Index change, and the Fund may not be invested in each asset class, country or geographic region at all times. The Index Provider determines whether an issuer is located in an emerging market country by reference to the Reference Index methodology. MSCI Inc., which constructs the Reference Index, will generally deem an issuer to be located in an emerging market country if it is organized under the laws of the emerging market country and it is primarily listed in the emerging market country; in the event that these factors point to more than one country, the Reference Index methodology provides for consideration of certain additional factors. The Index is comprised of equity securities, including American Depositary Receipts (“ADRs”) and Global Depositary Receipts (“GDRs”). The Fund seeks to invest in the Index components in approximately the same weighting that such components have within the Index at the applicable time. The Fund may purchase a sample of securities in its Index. There may also be instances in which the Investment Adviser may choose to underweight or overweight a security in the Fund’s Index, purchase securities not in the Fund’s Index that the Investment Adviser believes are appropriate to substitute for certain securities in such Index or utilize various combinations of other available investment techniques. The Fund may also invest up to 20% of its assets in securities and other instruments not included in its Index but which the Investment Adviser believes are correlated to its Index, as well as in, among other instruments, futures (including index futures), swaps, other derivatives, investment companies (including exchange-traded funds (“ETFs”)), preferred stocks, warrants and rights, cash and cash equivalents and money market instruments. The Fund may concentrate its investments (i.e., hold more than 25% of its total assets) in a particular industry or group of industries to the extent that its Index is concentrated. The degree to which components of the Index represent certain sectors or industries may change over time.