For the passive or index hugging investor, it hasn’t been a great year to be invested in Europe. Over the past 12 months, the MSCI Europe index including dividends is roughly flat in Euro terms. The MSCI European Small Cap index including dividends is down almost 5% over the same period. Most of the worst performing national indices this year have been European.
It’s been a surprisingly good environment for plying the value investing trade. Good stocks have become cheaply priced frequently enough to keep us busy. At the same time, mismatches between price and value have tended to close fairly promptly, especially on any good subsequent operating results.
We’d caution against reading much into any short-term returns. But the last 12 months have been good for the Forager International Shares Fund. And European small caps have been the most important contributors to that outcome.
In this short video, the third in a series of four short videos discussing the Forager International Shares Fund’s September 2016 quarter, we discuss the Fund’s most meaningful outperformers over the past year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzZFYwEJzIg