International Small Cap Funds - WAIOX

[sam]

I own a small position in this fund. You can see fund performance on your own. It seems like this one is Fair weather fund or Growth Market Mania fund. It has flat YTD performance when growth has been firing full speed.

Q: What do most people do with a dud fund and small position?

[chang]

I would sell and move on. Whether you want to maintain this exposure in your AA is a separate question. The chart is pretty bad.

[Chahta]

International has not been the best place to be. Picking a sector out of International would seem to be even worse. Buy a broad index fund to satisfy any International allocation you need. Just my 2 cents.

[steadyeddy]

I agree.. I own a small portion of xUS developed index and Emerging Market index, and I am calling it a day. To be fair, the last 12 months saw xUS developed hold up much better than US, but EM is a different story due to geopolitical cross-currents.

[win1177]

Jul 23, 2023 2:18:17 GMT Chahta said:

International has not been the best place to be. Picking a sector out of International would seem to be even worse. Buy a broad index fund to satisfy any International allocation you need. Just my 2 cents.

Agree with Chahta, international has lagged domestic for a while. I still believe in holding a dedicated “slice” of International (about 9- 10%), but I hold the majority of that in international broad market index funds. I do hold a smaller slice of a small cap international fund, which is VFSAX (Vanguard FTSE All World ex-US small cap index fund, it has done reasonable well as far as tracking its index, but not as good as domestic funds. It only represents about 1% of our total portfolio, so minimal effects. But it’s done OK. 

If you’re not happy with it, sell and deploy elsewhere. I’m slowly switching more of our portfolio to cheaper index funds, just to lower costs and make it easier for heirs (or wife) to manage down the road.

Win