A Foreign Fund With 3 Uncommon Qualities

Gregg Wolper: The Medalist of the Week is Neuberger Berman International Equity Fund. This fund is unusual in three main respects.

First: Its manager, Benjamin Segal, has been running the fund for more than 11 years now and was on the fund before that as a comanager for several more years. That's a pretty long tenure for the international realm.

Second: It's an all-cap fund. That means that it not only owns the mid-caps--the mid-sized companies where Benjamin Segal thinks the best opportunities for growth lie and where he thinks that analysts overlook these sorts of companies--but [the fund will] also own bigger stocks, some really giant ones, as well as small caps. That mixture is unusual also in the international realm.

Third: Although he is a growth-leaning manager, he has a constraint in his own mind on what he'll pay for a company and how expensive he'll let it get before he sells it. So, its portfolio usually lands on the border between growth and blend; it's a way to get some growth without being too aggressive. Now, this fund isn't for everyone because it doesn't stay in one specific [Morningstar] Style Box area. People who want that sort of rigid approach won't like it, but it has a lot going for it. It's worth taking a look at.