The fund seeks capital appreciation by investing in companies across any size outside the United States.
The investment process starts with a list of companies in the benchmark index and the research team utilizes quantitative techniques and fundamental analysis to identify investment opportunities.
Next, the research team focuses on foreign securities, including emerging market securities.
The team invests in companies exhibiting above average earnings growth potential, or that are estimated to trade below their fair values, or in a combination of growth and value companies.
Then the team utilizes a strategy based on blending fundamental and quantitative research.
The team utilizes fundamental analysis of individual issuers to determine a fundamental rating for an issuer, and also employs quantitative analysis to determine a quantitative rating for an issuer
Next, the team combines the fundamental rating with the quantitative rating to create a blended rating for an issuer.
Additionally, the team considers the blended rating, as well as issuer, industry, and sector weightings, market capitalization, and volatility when constructing the portfolio.
Then the manager constructs a portfolio of stocks from a list of companies favored by the research team and allocates capital based on its conviction level.
The fund has the flexibility to invest across all market capitalizations, but primarily invests in securities of companies with large capitalizations.
Also, the fund invests its assets across different industries, sectors, countries, and regions, but may invest a significant percentage of its net assets in issuers in a single industry, sector, country, or region.