Fund Description: First Trust Long/Short Equity ETF is an actively managed exchange-traded fund or Actively Managed ETF which is a separate investment portfolio of the First Trust Exchange-Traded Fund III, an open-end investment management company. INVESTMENT OBJECTIVE: The First Trust Long/Short Equity ETF seeks to provide investors with long term total return. The Fund is an actively managed ETF and thus, does not seek to replicate the performance of a specific index, but rather uses an active investment strategy to meet its investment objective. Accordingly, the ETF’s investment advisor, First Trust Advisors L.P., has discretion on a daily basis to actively manage the Fund’s portfolio in accordance with the Fund’s investment objective. FUND STRATEGY: The Fund intends to pursue its investment objective by establishing long and short positions in a portfolio of Equity Securities. Under normal circumstances, at least 80% of the Fund's net assets (plus the amount of any borrowing for investment purposes) will be exposed to U.S. exchange-listed equity securities of U.S. and foreign companies by investing in such securities directly and/or in U.S. exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that provide exposure to such securities. The Equity Securities held by the Fund may include U.S. exchange-listed equity securities of foreign issuers, as well as investments in the equity securities of foreign issuers that are in the form of depositary receipts. The Fund's investment advisor will select Equity Securities using an investment process that analyzes fundamental, market-related, technical and statistical attributes of Equity Securities to assess total return potential. The Adviser will then use this analysis as the basis to establish long and short positions within the Fund's portfolio. The Fund pursues its objective by using a variety of quantitative tools to select stocks that the Fund's investment advisor believes will either outperform (the long basket) or underperform (the short basket). Preliminary rankings of the positions will rely on the Sabrient Systems Earnings Quality Rank (EQR) model and the proprietary research of the Fund's investment advisor. Long and short baskets are then integrated and optimized to build a final portfolio. The overall portfolio, under normal market conditions, will be 80 to 100% invested in long positions and 0% to 50% invested in short positions. The Fund will not use proceeds from the short positions to add leverage to the long positions, and as such, the Fund will not have a net long exposure of greater than 100%. The Fund may invest up to 20% of its net assets (plus the amount of any borrowing for investment purposes) in U.S. exchange-listed equity index futures contracts. These futures contracts will be used to gain long or short exposure to broad based equity indexes. FUND MANAGEMENT: First Trust Advisors L.P. serves as investment advisor to the Fund.