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Analysis: The managers of this fund use a fundamental, bottom-up approach in selecting stocks so you’d think they’d be doing better. However, this fund has been an underperformer since its launch in mid-2002 – albeit, in fairness, the current team only assumed responsibility in July 2004. Although this is billed as a global fund, 75% of the assets are in U.S. companies which means that the rapid rise of the Canadian dollar has been a major factor in the poor results. With another 7.4% of the portfolio in Canadian stocks, that makes this primarily a North American fund with a smattering of overseas companies. By contrast, only 41% of the companion Global Equity Growth Fund is in North America. So if you are looking for a truly global fund, this won’t do the job for you. The average annual compound rate of return for the three years to July 31/05 is in negaitive territory at -0.1%. The one-year gain is +2.4%, well below average for the category. This is not one of the better choices in this group.