'Antiterror' Fund Carries a Small Stick

Dropping these hardly seems like a major hardship, even for an adventurous international investor. Sheer says a screen by Washington, D.C.-based Conflict Securities Advisory Group has found 484 public companies worldwide with links to one or more of these countries.

Sheer's fund has a worthy aim, and I don't want to sound too critical. But it doesn't go nearly far enough.

The first thing to notice is that the focus on just four countries leaves the fund free to invest in plenty of other companies that do business in countries with deeply questionable regimes. Top holdings include consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble (PG Quote) and Altria (MO Quote), parent company of cigarette leader Philip Morris. Both operate in such countries as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Lebanon, Hugo Chavez' Venezuela, Vladimir Putin's Russia, and various other unsavory states around Asia and North Africa.

It's a problem Sheer acknowledges.