Daily Screen: International Stock Funds

Today's Screen covers foreign stock funds. As you might imagine, these are defined broadly as funds whose managers focus on stocks based outside the U.S.

As usual, we've screened for funds that beat the category's average return over the past one- and three-year periods, according to Morningstar. The top 10 are ranked by one-year return in the first table. The pack that makes our list are among the category's more aggressive funds that have typically ridden high-octane growth stocks and/or small-cap stocks to higher returns than more conservative peers. On average, the 10 top foreign funds have more than half of their assets invested in tech/telecommunications stocks, according to their most recent portfolio reports.

You'll notice (JIGRX)Janus Adviser International Growth on the list. The fund is run by the same team and in the same style as (JAOSX)Janus Overseas, currently closed to new investors, and Janus Aspen International Growth, which were left off the list, despite their worthy performance, to avoid redundancy.

The second table lists the 10 most popular stocks among the funds on the top-10 list. It was compiled by creating an equally weighted portfolio of the 10 funds and screening for their 10 biggest holdings. Even though these funds have a broad range of companies and countries to choose from, they have many holdings in common and several are traded in the U.S.

The list includes the usual suspects from several of your favorite domestic or global growth funds, including networking shops Nortel Networks (NT) and JDS Uniphase(JDSU).

Leading Foreign Stock Funds Among foreign stock funds that beat their average peer over the last one- and three-year periods, these 10 have the highest one-year return.
Fund	1-Year Return	3-Year Annualized Return
(BISIX)BlackRock International Small Cap	93.3%	40.5%
Pictet International Small Companies	83.3	28.7
(CSQAX)Smith Barney International Aggressive Growth	67.3	34.3
(PRIDX)T. Rowe Price International Discovery	62.6	35
(JIGRX)Janus Adviser International Growth	62.5	27.2
(FICDX)Fidelity Canada	59.2	10.8
(TWEGX)American Century International Discovery	57.2	28.3
(IYSAX)Ivy International Small Companies	53.2	14.5
(NAGUX)Pilgrim International Small Cap Growth	52.5	38.2
(PNVAX)Putnam International Voyager	47.1	31.3
Avg. Foreign Stock Fund	-11.1	9.5
S&P 500	-0.6	16.5
Source: Morningstar. Performance through Sept. 27.

Under the Hood The stocks with the biggest weighting in the combined portfolios of the funds listed above.
Stock	Weighting in Winning Funds	Number of Funds That Own the Stock
Nortel Networks(NT)	1.7%	3
BCE(BCE)	1.5	2
Marschollek, Lautenschlaeger	1	3
Intershop Communications	0.8	6
C-Mac Industries(EMS)	0.7	3
Celestica(CLS)	0.7	3
JDS Uniphase(JDSU)	0.7	3
Nippon Telegraph & Telecom(NTT)	0.7	1
Baltimore Technologies(BALT)	0.6	6
Vestas Wind Systems	0.6	4
Source: Morningstar. Holdings as of most recent portfolio reports.

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