Invest Around the Globe With This Worthy Fund

Shannon Yan: Boston Partners Global Equity is a good option for investing around the globe.

Christopher Hart is an experienced manager and has demonstrated his stock-picking skills since joining this fund in 2008. He was instrumental in improving this strategy's prospects. He also receives support from two comanagers and a deep, cohesive 42-person research team.

This fund looks for three things in a potential investment: reasonable valuation, strong fundamentals, and improving business momentum. It is benchmark-agnostic and offers quite different exposures than the typical peer. For example, the fund has gradually increased its value exposure since 2017, as the team found their successful growth- and momentum-driven stocks in the past, such Apple and Activision Blizzard, to be expensive. The fund has also stood out for being valuation-conscious; its average price multiples have hovered below its benchmark since its inception.

From market-cap and regional perspectives, the fund likes to dip down the market-cap spectrum a little bit, and it has always had a tilt to the U.S. and U.K.

Hart and his team have successfully navigated through most up and down markets since taking over. Under their guidance, the fund landed in the world-stock category's top third or better in market rallying years of 2012-2014 as well as more turbulent times such as 2011 and 2015-16. It looks even better on a risk-adjusted basis. The fund is a worthy choice for your portfolio and earns a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Silver.