The fund seeks capital appreciation in the long term by investing in companies 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 invests primarily in equities of highly innovative companies or knowledge leaders.
The team considers knowledge leaders to be companies that have demonstrated a track record of successfully employing their research and development and have built competitive advantages using their own firm-specific resources such as proprietary knowledge, intellectual property or a unique distribution mechanism.
In addition, the team employs a proprietary, quantitative process to measure a company’s intangible adjusted financial history for knowledge and innovation intensity, financial strength, and profitability.
The team then selects the group of knowledge leader stocks that in have the greatest liquidity characteristics.
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 portfolio will include a diversified mix of mid- and large-cap companies from the developed world including North America, Europe and Asia.
Generally, the fund will be invested in securities identified as knowledge leaders at the time of investment, with not more than 25% in any one industry.
Also, the fund will invest at least 40% of its net assets in securities of companies located outside the United States.
From time to time, the fund may have a significant portion of its net assets invested in a specific sector or geographical area.
Additionally, the fund may also invest in other investment companies, ETFs, cash, cash equivalents and money market instruments.
