4 Best Mutual Funds for Foreign Stocks

American Funds New Perspective F1 (NPFFX) is the cautious way to play foreign stocks. It invests roughly half of its assets in foreign stocks and half in U.S. stocks. Over the past 10 years, it has returned an annualized 6.3%—an average of 4.9 percentage points per year more than the MSCI All-Country World index. Annual expenses are 0.84%. Like all American funds, it is sold primarily through advisers, but individual investors can buy this and other American funds without paying a sales charge through the Fidelity and Schwab online brokerages.
Fidelity International Growth (FIGFX) manager Jed Weiss looks for unfairly tarnished stocks. Some are out of favor because of industry conditions; others are depressed because of company-specific crises. Over the past five years, the fund has returned an annualized 7.0%—an average of 1.1-percentage point better than the MSCI EAFE index. Weiss currently has 20% of assets in U.S. stocks. The fund is a member of the Kiplinger 25.
American Funds New World F1 (NWFFX) is a longtime favorite of mine. About half of its assets are in emerging markets stocks; the remainder is in multinational companies that do lots of business in emerging markets. The fund has consistently topped emerging markets stocks overall in bad markets and has bested foreign stocks in developed countries in good markets.
Vanguard Total International Stock ETF (VXUS) is a great choice in an index fund. For a mere 0.13% annually, it gives you the entire foreign world, including a 19% weighting in emerging markets. The fund owns some 6,000 stocks. If you don’t like the exchange-traded-fund wrapper, you can buy the fund under the symbol VGTSX for 0.18% annually or at the same price as the ETF through the admiral shares (VTIAX). The admiral shares require a $10,000 minimum investment.

Read more:

• Warren Buffet quits Walmart Inc and adds volume in the financial sector
• Aston Martin to become public until the end of 2018
• Here are the 20 stocks that the biggest hedge funds love most
• Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: UAA, PFE, AET, MDLZ & more
• Brian Sozzi: Apple Might Be Worth $1 Trillion Very Soon