1. What guarantees are there that I will get my money back?

There are 2 issues here, performance of the fund and the possibility of scamming.

The first is largely covered by the buy sell spread in that each new investor effectively adds to the value of the fund. Even if there were no trading profit (unlikely as Optech will be paid commission based on that profit) the value of the fund would slowly grow. Of course if you buy and sell quickly the buy/sell spread will cost you 15%.

As to the second, it is pretty much impossible to protect 100% against "scams" in New Eden and some very credible share offerings have ended in scams. Other IPO's have been wildly profitable. You can minimise risk by only investing what you can afford to lose, investing only cautiously until Optech has a longer track record, or not investing.

2. Shouldn't there be a smaller buy/sell spread?

We may look at this at a later date when we have a better idea of how investors will move money into and out of the fund. The problem that we worry about is that if there were a lot of "churn" we would spend a vast amount of time simply doing the admin. However to put the spread in context it is likely that the capital growth of the fund will have made up your unit price in 2 to 3 weeks.

3. Where are my shares?

No shares are issued in a unit trust and it is slightly different to shareholding in this respect. You will receive an acknowledgement email for your purchases and sales and should check this against the Weekly Sales Ledger and Register of Investors when you trade your units.