8 of the Best International Fund Managers

To uncover new stock picks for investors to research further, we often turn to the portfolio holdings of top concentrated fund managers. By our definition, the best fund managers running high-conviction portfolios have outperformed over full market cycles; they’re not one-hit wonders who’ve beaten the market over a short time frame with a lucky stock pick or two. They’ve endured.

Today we’re taking a deep dive into the investing strategies of the most adept stock-pickers running high-conviction strategies focused on international large-cap stocks. Our list of the best managers featured here met these screening criteria:

• They’re running actively managed funds that land in one of the following large-cap stock international fund Morningstar Categories: foreign large growth, foreign large blend, or foreign large value.
• They oversee a fund with at least one share class earning a Morningstar Medalist Rating of Gold with 100% analyst coverage.
• Management holds 100 stocks or fewer as of the most recently reported portfolios.

Eight concentrated funds investing in international large-cap stocks passed our screen.

8 of the Best International Fund Managers of 2024

The managers of these top concentrated international funds focused on large-cap stocks met our criteria as of July 15, 2024.

1. Artisan International Value ARTKX
2. Causeway International Value CIVVX
3. Dodge & Cox International Stock DODFX
4. Goldman Sachs GQG Partners International Opportunities GSINX
5. JPMorgan International Equity JSEAX
6. MFS International Equity MIEIX
7. Oakmark International OAKIX
8. WCM Focused International Growth WCMIX

Here’s a closer look at the best fund managers running high-conviction large-cap international-stock strategies today, including insights from Morningstar’s analysts into each management team’s playbook for stock-picking success. All data is as of July 15.

Artisan International Value

• Morningstar Category: Foreign Large Blend
• Number of Stock Holdings: 27
• Turnover: 19%
• Top Three Sectors: Financial Services (20.38%), Technology (19.43%), Industrials (16.32%)
• Top Three Countries: Switzerland (28.67%), United Kingdom (22.90%), France (14.57%)

The first of the best fund managers focused on international stocks, the team at Artisan International Value practices a strategy that balances valuation and quality, observes Morningstar associate director Andrew Daniels. The fund lands in Morningstar’s foreign large-blend category, and its current portfolio is heavier in tech stocks than the average fund in the group—and therefore a bit growthier in flavor, too.

This team is composed of value investors who emphasize quality firms with financial strength and shareholder-oriented management. The team leverages qualitative and quantitative screens to narrow the investment universe to a manageable level. The quant screens incorporate a variety of valuation and growth metrics. Moreover, it shuns firms with poor accounting and corporate governance standards, as well as those operating in markets with inadequate laws and regulations.

The team conducts in-depth fundamental research on prospective holdings and assigns three-year price targets. It invests in firms of all sizes that trade at discounts to intrinsic value estimates, although the focus is overwhelmingly on large-cap stocks. The resulting portfolio typically holds just 40–60 stocks. Commensurate with management’s long-term mindset, portfolio turnover is typically below 30%. Position sizes are weighted by conviction, but top holdings are generally capped at 5% of assets. It also pays limited attention to benchmarks and is willing to avoid regions and sectors for valuation or quality reasons. When the managers can’t find opportunities that meet their strict standards, cash can build up to 15% of assets.

Capacity continues to be a watch point here, but management has proved time and time again it is focused on protecting current investors. The fund closed to new investors in 2007, reopened in 2009, then closed again in 2011. The team briefly reopened in March 2020 but subsequently soft-closed the offering again in June 2021, where it has remained since. The fact that this group no longer supports the $22.4 billion Artisan Global Value ARTGX strategy gives the team more leeway than it had prior to the 2018 team split.

Causeway International Value

• Morningstar Category: Foreign Large Value
• Number of Stock Holdings: 66
• Turnover: 54%
• Top Three Sectors: Financial Services (17.85%), Industrials (17.19%), Healthcare (13.45%)
• Top Three Countries: United Kingdom (35.89%), France (14.06%), Germany (9.80%)

The second-best fund manager on our list takes a value approach to investing in international stocks. The Causeway team seeks out mispriced companies facing temporary operational challenges that won’t create financial distress, explains Morningstar senior analyst Todd Trubey. He notes that the fund’s portfolio doesn’t look like its index or like those of its peers. For instance, the current portfolio is heavily overweight in UK stocks relative to its peers and leans more into wide- and narrow-moat stocks than other funds in its category, too.

Causeway’s investment team seeks non-US firms facing operational, but not financial, distress. It mixes fundamental and quantitative analysis in a disciplined approach. Causeway’s quant analysts run stock screens to narrow the investment universe to stocks that look cheap. The fundamental analysts then work on chosen stocks from the screens to determine price targets. Next, the quant team uses these projections to create risk-adjusted return rankings.

All in, the system has quants do the broad, data-heavy work and lets fundamental analysts go deep to discover where low valuations show mispricings. The eight portfolio managers make portfolio decisions, usually selecting from among the highest-rated stocks on a risk-adjusted basis. The ranking system also helps the team identify sell candidates.

The system focuses heavily on company-specific data and produces bold portfolios. While the screens do look within countries and specialize by industry, they don’t mimic indexes. So the strategy often has atypical country and sector weightings. The portfolios are also rather concentrated, with about 55-65 stocks and around 30% of its assets in the top 10 holdings. To allow mispricings to correct, the managers are patient: Over the past 10 years, the strategy’s turnover has averaged 39% versus the standard category peer’s 50%.

Dodge & Cox International Stock

• Morningstar Category: Foreign Large Value
• Number of Stock Holdings: 76
• Turnover: 14%
• Top Three Sectors: Financial Services (26.50%), Healthcare (15.71%), Basic Materials (11.83%)
• Top Three Countries: United Kingdom (15.95%), Switzerland (12.48%), France (12.08%)

The Dodge & Cox team remains among the best fund managers investing abroad, even though it has experienced some personnel changes lately. We nevertheless expect management’s trademark of intensive research-based, patient contrarianism to persist, explains Morningstar associate director Tony Thomas.

Dodge & Cox’s global industry analysts do thorough, bottom-up research. They look to go against the consensus view on businesses they believe have competitive advantages, good growth potential, and talented executives. Vetting ideas first in sector committees gives analysts expert, industry-relevant feedback; the portfolio managers further scrutinize analysts’ proposals with a keen eye toward portfolio construction. The managers insist on picking up cheap stocks, often taking advantage of bad news or a tough economic environment to build positions. Broader macroeconomic views on factors such as legislative or political shifts play lesser roles. The managers let fundamental research lead to significant sector and geographic concentrations at times.

With so many against-the-grain picks, risk management is key, and Dodge & Cox has upped its game in the past decade. Its managers have always been patient but disciplined about selling pricey, shaky, or relatively unattractive holdings—though they occasionally make mistakes. In response, the firm has built informative in-house risk tools that offer more-sophisticated views of portfolio exposures and position sizing. It also has facilitated the expression of dissenting views to capture a fuller range of opinions. On the periphery, the managers selectively hedge currency risk and have used derivatives such as total-return swaps to temper price risk.

Bottom-up research on individual companies drives stock selection. As a result, the portfolio’s sector and country positioning often contrast with the strategy’s MSCI ACWI ex USA Value Index category benchmark. The strategy often invests in emerging markets.

Goldman Sachs GQG Partners International Opportunities

• Morningstar Category: Foreign Large Growth
• Number of Stock Holdings: 58
• Turnover: 62%
• Top Three Sectors: Technology (33.24%), Energy (13.85%), Healthcare (12.74%)
• Top Three Countries: United States (20.00%), India (15.86%), Netherlands (11.61%)

Running the first growth strategy among our best fund managers investing in large-cap international stocks, manager Rajiv Jain and his team ply what Morningstar senior analyst Gregg Wolper calls a “creative and successful quality growth approach.” The approach can lead to drastic portfolio shifts and a good deal of sector and Morningstar Style Box flexibility; Wolper concludes that it would be tough for anyone to follow a similar strategy with the same level of success.

Jain wants reliably growing companies, but only if they’re on solid financial footing and have demonstrated the ability to weather slow economies. Sectors or countries can be heavily over- or underweighted. Though Jain often has held stocks for many years, he’ll change direction quickly and decisively if he considers it appropriate. When he founded GQG in 2016, he sharply reduced his once-huge stake in the consumer staples sector when he felt it faced new and daunting challenges. From early 2021 to late 2022, the fund’s energy stake soared while the technology stake plummeted; later he partly reversed that move.

Jain and his team focus on big companies with competitive advantages and barriers to entry. They want to see high returns on equity and assets and acceptable levels of leverage. Then they use fundamental analysis to research future growth opportunities, estimate risks, analyze the accounting, and estimate a reasonable price. Several former journalists use their investigative skills to seek information or trends that might not be apparent in the numbers. The portfolio often carries midteens levels of stocks domiciled in the US and will put 5% to 7% of assets in top names.

Jain has final responsibility but works closely with his team.

Changes have continued here. Over 2021 and 2022, the focus shifted drastically, with the energy sector soaring to 24.2% of assets at year-end 2022 from just 1.5% in March 2021. The technology sector went in the opposite direction because manager Rajiv Jain and his team considered it broadly overvalued; that sector’s weight plummeted to just 2.7% from 20.9% in that period. Those shifts paid off with a standout performance in 2022 when tech stocks stumbled and energy stocks rose. Jain reacted by partly reversing course, arguing that after their deep declines, some tech firms had become attractive again. By March 31, 2023, the portfolio had 7.7% of assets in tech, and through a combination of more buying and market appreciation, by year-end 2023 the tech weighting was back up to 20.2%. The energy weighting fell a bit but remained high at 18.1% of assets, far above the weighting in the MSCI ACWI ex US Index. Instead, the cash to fund the tech buys came from selling consumer staples names. That sector stood at just 5.0% of assets on Dec. 31, 2023, an underweighting versus the index; it had been about 23% a year earlier.

JPMorgan International Equity

• Morningstar Category: Foreign Large Blend
• Number of Stock Holdings: 77
• Turnover: 45%
• Top Three Sectors: Financial Services (19.11%), Industrials (17.40%), Technology (13.67%)
• Top Three Countries: Japan (22.17%), France (18.08%), United Kingdom (16.63%)

Lead manager Tom Murray and his team want stock selection to drive returns; to that end, they minimize unintended sector, country, and style-related bets relative to this fund’s index, reports Morningstar’s Daniels. The result is therefore a well-balanced portfolio of international large-cap stocks. Notably, this best fund manager currently holds a larger position in Japanese stocks than others on our list.

The offering focuses on non-US firms that score well on balance-sheet strength, profitability, and management quality. Idea generation relies on this team’s global sector specialists, who scour the best ideas from J.P. Morgan’s vast regional equity research teams—which cover approximately 2,500 stocks around the world—by viewing their research with a global lens. The global specialists ultimately rank stocks from A to C, with A representing their highest-conviction bets, a framework that helps form position-sizing decisions. The team is long-term-oriented—it sets five-year expected return targets—so it’s no surprise that annual portfolio turnover trends around 30%. While management is willing to pay up for some growth-oriented opportunities, valuation is an important consideration as well. As a result, the portfolio is well-balanced from a style perspective; this is why it landed in the core portion of the style box.

The portfolio is composed of 70 to 100 stocks, with individual holdings capped at 5%. Management wants stock selection to drive returns, so sector weightings are generally held close to the MSCI EAFE prospectus benchmark, though country-relative weightings can diverge up to 15 percentage points. Up to 15% of portfolio assets can be invested in emerging markets but in practice hasn’t exceeded midsingle digits.

JPMorgan International Equity’s portfolio exposures reinforce that management is cognizant of balancing quality and valuation. Indeed, quality metrics like returns on invested capital have trended above the prospectus benchmark and the category index. At the same time, price multiples like price/earnings have typically been slightly higher than both core indexes over the years but well below their growth counterparts.

Japan has become a growing area of interest for the team, partially because of improving corporate governance. The team added at least nine Japanese holdings since mid-2022 (through December 2023), including tiremaker Bridgestone and conglomerate Hitachi.

MFS International Equity

• Morningstar Category: Foreign Large Blend
• Number of Stock Holdings: 77
• Turnover: 10%
• Top Three Sectors: Industrials (21.19%), Financial Services (19.37%), Healthcare (14.16%)
• Top Three Countries: France (19.16%), Japan (15.12%), Switzerland (14.39%)

The managers at MFS International Equity take what Morningstar director Dan Culloton calls a “simple yet consistent approach.” The team favors companies with solid fundamentals and defensible market positions and then tries to buy them when they’re on sale. However, they will hold on to growth stocks if they think the stocks are solid compounders, adds Culloton.

The managers rely on broad and thorough bottom-up research and a disciplined focus on moderately growing, established companies with shares trading at decent prices. That is not unique, but the process is bred in MFS’ bones and has delivered strong results elsewhere, including the highly rated MFS Global Equity.

The managers look for firms growing faster than global gross domestic product. That’s a lower hurdle than more aggressive growth funds, since global GDP historic growth is in the single digits. The managers rely on their own research and that of MFS’ big and experienced fundamental research team to find growing companies with competitive advantages and management teams that encourage predictable earnings and cash flows, healthy balance sheets, and strong returns on capital. The managers concentrate further up the market-cap ladder than most foreign large-blend and large-growth peers, so the portfolio’s average market cap is typically higher than the category norm.

They also pay attention to valuations. The portfolio has hovered around the large-growth and large-blend style box border (the fund moved to the foreign large-blend category in 2020). Portfolio turnover is low, in the teens historically. Stock-picking shapes the 60- to 80-stock portfolio, but the fund caps emerging markets at 15%.

This is a diversified yet distinctive portfolio. It spreads its bets over about 80 stocks. The strategy’s preference for moderate growers with competitive advantages in developed markets helps it stand out. Stock selection, rather than sector bets, drives sector and region allocations and differences with benchmarks.

Oakmark International

• Morningstar Category: Foreign Large Value
• Number of Stock Holdings: 66
• Turnover: 27%
• Top Three Sectors: Consumer Cyclical (20.55%), Financial Services (19.97%), Industrials (19.34%)
• Top Three Countries: Germany (27.05%), United Kingdom (20.30%), France (16.83%)

Lead manager David Herro has been at the helm of Oakmark International for more than three decades; Oakmark has added a couple of comanagers to the fund over the years. Herro and his team employ a contrarian, disciplined approach rooted in bottom-up research, says Morningstar’s Daniels. Herro is the only best fund manager investing in international stocks on our list with such a huge position in German stocks.

Management’s approach is rooted in old-fashioned, bottom-up detective work. Using a variety of valuation techniques, it seeks stocks trading about 30% below their value but whose businesses have durable growth opportunities, stable finances, and executives who allocate capital like long-term owners and are big shareholders. With 50-60 stocks and about 40% of assets in its top 10 holdings, this portfolio is compact and conviction-weighted. The gap between holdings’ share prices and management’s estimated business values determines their position sizes, and stocks with the greatest upsides get the biggest weights. Management is patient as it waits for the valuation gap to close, so portfolio turnover is generally low.

Stock-picking drives country and sector weightings, though management limits individual positions to 7%, industry weightings to 25%, and country stakes to 30%. That gives ample leeway to distinguish itself from the MSCI ACWI ex USA Index, and active share has hovered around 90% over the years. The strategy also selectively hedges foreign-currency exposure when a currency is trading at least 20% higher than the team’s estimated value, which has been additive over the long term.

The portfolio is value-oriented. Price multiples (like price/earnings) and quality measures (like returns on invested capital) have trended materially lower than those of the core MSCI ACWI ex USA Index. Instead, such metrics have tracked more closely to the MSCI ACWI ex USA Value Index, hence why the strategy is placed in the foreign large-value category.

WCM Focused International Growth

• Morningstar Category: Foreign Large Growth
• Number of Stock Holdings: 35
• Turnover: 33%
• Top Three Sectors: Industrials (24.48%), Technology (22.09%), Consumer Cyclical (17.45%)
• Top Three Countries: United States (27.20%), Canada (11.77%), France (10.34%)

The team at WCM Focused International Growth rounds out our list of the best fund managers focused on international large-cap stocks. They buy high-growth, durable businesses and limit the portfolio to only their best ideas. Unsurprisingly, the portfolio tends to score high for growth and quality factors relative to other funds in the foreign large-growth category.

To narrow down the vast universe of non-U.S. companies to a manageable amount, the team excludes those with market caps below $3.5 billion and those in nongrowth industries such as utilities. A screen then looks for companies with high and rising margins and returns on invested capital, little or no debt, and proven track records of durable growth.

The team then looks at prospective holdings from several perspectives to determine their long-term potential, paying particular attention to the trajectory and durability of a company’s competitive advantages. Factors such as economies of scale, intellectual property, and legal or regulatory advantages are key when assessing their economic moats. The team supplements this research with a focus on strong company cultures, which it believes can drive certain companies forward and support their competitive advantage.

The approach is concentrated and benchmark-agnostic, but the managers implement sensible risk-management measures. Individual position sizes are limited to 10% of portfolio assets, and sector weightings are limited to 35% each. To diversify the 30- to 45-stock portfolio, the team spreads holdings across three growth buckets: secular, cyclical, and defensive. The team also aims to have exposure to at least 15 industries and a variety of tailwinds and moat types.

The team’s focus on businesses with dominant competitive positions is evident in the portfolio. Since the fund’s May 2011 inception, its allocation to companies with a wide Morningstar Economic Moat Rating ranged from 11% to 44%, which was consistently above the median foreign large-growth category peer’s 8% to 34% range and the MSCI ACWI ex USA Growth’s 9% to 37%. Investing in such companies has typically led to the portfolio having higher efficiency metrics, such as returns on equity, invested capital, and assets, than peers.

This focus on companies with durable competitive advantages gives the managers confidence to invest with conviction. This differentiated portfolio typically holds roughly 30 to 45 stocks, and the managers tend to stash between 35% and 45% of the portfolio’s assets in its top 10 holdings. Although the managers have the leeway to let individual position sizes grow to 10% of assets, they typically start trimming a name once it reaches 5% to reduce single-stock risk.

The quality, growth-focused approach leads the managers to invest heavily in a few sectors and regions. From a regional perspective, the portfolio tends to have 10%-25% exposure to US-based companies, which is much more than the index’s near 0% weighting. That said, most of these companies derive a significant amount of their revenue internationally.

3 Qualities of the Best Fund Managers

Our list of the best fund managers focused on international large-cap stocks spans investment styles; these are varied playbooks from which investors can find new stock ideas. Yet many of the managers share a few qualities that investors can emulate.

They make investment decisions based on in-depth fundamental research. The best managers know their companies well. They understand the underlying businesses and competitive positioning of the companies they own.

They favor quality companies that can endure. Many of these managers have large positions in companies with wide or narrow Morningstar Economic Moat Ratings. We expect these companies to maintain their competitive positions for a decade or longer.

They have patience. As their turnover rates suggest, most of the best fund managers invest for the long term and are willing to wait for their investment theses to play out; they don’t sell stocks based on price weakness if nothing has changed fundamentally.

How to Find Stock Picks of the Best International Fund Managers

We frequently talk about stocks that the best managers own and that these managers are buying and selling; you’ll find many of those articles and videos in our archive. But there are other tools available for those who’d like to get more stock-pick ideas from these great managers and others like them.

• Investors can explore the stock picks of the best large-cap international stock managers included in this article by visiting the report pages on Morningstar.com for each of these funds and clicking on the Portfolio tab. Scroll to the bottom of the Portfolio page to find the top 25 holdings for each fund. Morningstar Investor members get a bonus: They can view full portfolio holdings for each fund, along with other key Morningstar metrics like the Morningstar Rating for stocks and Morningstar Economic Moat Rating for each stock pick.
• Morningstar Investor members can create screens of “best fund managers” using their own criteria using the Morningstar Investor screening tool and then dig into the portfolios of the funds that pass their screens.

What Are Morningstar’s Ratings?

The Morningstar Medalist Rating provides investors with assessments of a strategy’s ability to outperform its Morningstar Category index after fees. This five-tier rating system, which operates on a scale ranging from Gold to Negative, includes analyzing the performance of the asset-management firms that handle various assets and securities and determining whether their processes are sensible and clearly defined. Other factors that are taken into account are the investment philosophy behind the investment vehicle, the level of risk involved in the process, and the manager’s approach to navigating that risk.

The following pillars are used to designate an appropriate Morningstar Medalist Rating for each respective fund:

• People Pillar: This pillar evaluates the managers who are responsible for making key decisions regarding the fund.
• Process Pillar: This pillar determines whether the strategy that a parent organization applies to a fund is both effective and repeatable.
• Parent Pillar: This pillar analyzes the parent organization in charge of managing the fund.