Investment Objective

The investment strategy of the fund as set out by the fund management firm.

Morningstar Category

While the investment objective stated in a fund's prospectus may or may not reflect how the fund actually invests, the Morningstar Category is assigned based on the underlying securities in each portfolio. Morningstar Category helps investors and investment professionals make meaningful comparisons between funds. The categories make it easier to build well-diversified portfolios, assess potential risk, and identify top-performing funds.

ISIN

Stands for International Securities Identification Number (ISIN). A coding system used to distinguish securities.

NAV

A fund's net asset value (NAV) represents its per-share price. A fund's NAV is derived by dividing the total net assets of the fund, less fees and expenses, by the number of shares outstanding.

Total Net Assets (Mil)

This figure is recorded in millions of base currency and represents the fund's total asset base. Total net assets are useful in gauging a fund's size, agility, and popularity.

Fund Manager

The name of the individual or individuals who are directly responsible for managing the fund's portfolio, as taken directly from the fund's prospectus.

Fund Inception Date

The fund inception date gives the date on which the fund commenced operations.

Trailing Returns (%)

All references to total return represent a fund's gains over a specified period of time. Total return includes both income (in the form of dividends or interest payments) and capital gains or losses (the increase or decrease in the value of a security). Morningstar calculates total return by taking the change in a fund's NAV, assuming the reinvestment of all income and capital gains distributions (on the actual reinvestment date used by the fund) during the period, and then dividing by the initial NAV.
Unless marked as load-adjusted total returns, Morningstar does not adjust total return for sales charges or for redemption fees. Total returns do account for management, administrative, and other costs automatically deducted from fund assets.

Asset Allocation

A breakdown of the portfolio holdings into 4 general investment groups: Cash, Stocks, Bonds and Other.

1. Description of groups
   • Cash encompasses both actual cash and cash equivalents (fixed-income securities with a maturity of one year or less) held by the portfolio plus receivables minus payables.
   • Stocks includes all of the portfolio¡¦s common stocks.
   • Bonds includes everything from government notes to high-yield corporate bonds.
   • Other includes preferred stocks (equity securities that pay dividends at a specific rate) as well as convertible bonds and convertible preferreds, which are corporate securities that are exchangeable for a set amount of another form of security (usually common shares) at a prestated price. Other also denotes all those not-so-neatly categorized securities, such as warrants and options.
2. Asset Allocation: Long%, Short% and %Net
   • % Long
     It is the long position acquired by the buying and holding of the assets, expressed as a percentage of the NAV.
   • % Short
     It is the short selling position acquired by the sale of borrowed assets, expressed as a percentage of the NAV.
   • % Net Asset
     Morningstar calculates the percentage of net assets figure by dividing the market value of the security by the fund's total net assets. If a few securities take up a large percentage of the fund's net assets, the fund uses a concentrated portfolio strategy. If the percentage figures are low, then the manager is not willing to bet heavily on any particular security.

Morningstar Style Box

This is a proprietary Morningstar data point. The Morningstar Style Box is a nine-square grid that provides a graphical representation of the "investment style" of stocks and mutual funds. For stocks and stock funds, it classifies securities according to market capitalization (the vertical axis) and growth and value factors (the horizontal axis). Fixed income funds are classified according to credit quality (the vertical axis) and sensitivity to changes in interest rates (the horizontal axis).
By providing an easy-to-understand visual representation of stock and fund characteristics, the Morningstar Style Box allows for informed comparisons and portfolio construction based on actual holdings, as opposed to assumptions based on a fund's name or how it is marketed. The Style Box also forms the basis for Morningstar's style-based fund categories and market indexes.

Price/Earnings

The price/earnings (P/E) ratio of a fund is the weighted average of the P/E ratios of all the stocks in a fund's portfolio. The P/E ratio of a company, which is a comparison of the price of the company's stock to its trailing 12-month earnings per share, is calculated by dividing these two figures. A low P/E indicates that the market has less confidence that the company's earnings will increase; however, investors may also believe such stocks have an overlooked or undervalued potential for appreciation.

Price/Book

The price/book (P/B) ratio of a fund is the weighted average of the P/B ratios of all the stocks in a fund's portfolio. The P/B ratio compares the stock price to a company's book value. In finance, book value (also known as shareholders' equity) is a company's assets minus its liabilities. In other words, book value is what would be left over for shareholders if the company shut down and paid off all of its creditors as well as collected from all of its debtors and liquidated itself.

Price/Sales

The price/sales (P/S) ratio of a fund is the weighted average of the P/S ratios of all the stocks in a fund's portfolio. It is the ratio of a stock price to its company's annual sales per share.

Price/Cash Flow

The price/cash flow (P/CF) ratio of a fund is the weighted average of the P/CF ratios of all the stocks in a fund's portfolio. The P/CF ratio is one of major measures of a company's stock price relative to its financial performance. A company's P/CF ratio is calculated by dividing the market price of its outstanding stock by the company's operating cash flow, and then adjusting for the number of shares outstanding. The P/CF reveals the amount of money an investor is willing to pay for a dollar of cash generated from a company's operations. The P/CF, therefore, indicates the ability of a business to generate cash and can be a gauge of liquidity and solvency.

Sector Weightings

Top 10 Holdings

The top 10 holdings of the portfolio by % of assets.

Morningstar Rating™

Morningstar rates mutual funds from one to five stars based on how well they've performed (after adjusting for risk and accounting for all sales charges) in comparison to similar funds. In other words, stars are assigned to funds in the Hong Kong/Taiwan/Singapore universe based on relative performance. Within each Morningstar Category, the top 10% of funds receive five stars, the next 22.5% four stars, the middle 35% three stars, the next 22.5% two stars, and the bottom 10% receive one star. Funds with at least 36 months of history are also rated for up to three time periods--three-, five-, and ten-year --and these ratings are combined to produce an overall rating. In short, no rating will be assigned for funds with less than three years of history. Ratings are objective, based entirely on a mathematical evaluation of past performance. They're a useful tool for identifying funds worthy of further research, but shouldn't be considered buy or sell recommendations.

Mean Return

The mean represents the annualized average monthly return from which the standard deviation is calculated. The mean will not be exactly the same as the annualized trailing, three-year return figure for the same year. (Technically, the mean is an annualized arithmetic average while the total return figure is an annualized geometric average.)

Standard Deviation

Standard deviation is probably used more than any other measure to gauge a fund's risk. Standard deviation simply measures the variation of a fund's monthly returns around its average monthly return over a particular time period. Morningstar calculates standard deviation for the past 36 months of a fund's life. Since most people think about returns on an annual basis, the monthly standard deviations are modified to an annualized standard deviations. The more a fund's returns fluctuate from month to month, the greater its standard deviation.
Statistically speaking, future monthly returns will fall within one standard deviation of its average return 68% of the time and within two standard deviations 95% of the time for most funds. For example, suppose a fund has a standard deviation of 4% and an average return of 10% per year. Most of the time (or, more precisely, 68% of the time), the fund's future returns will range between 6% and 14%--or its 10% average plus or minus its 4% standard deviation. Almost all of the time (95% of the time), its returns will fall between 2% and 18%, or within two standard deviations.

Sharpe Ratio

Sharpe ratio uses standard deviation to measure a fund's risk-adjusted returns. The higher a fund's Sharpe ratio, the better a fund's returns have been relative to the risk it has taken on. Developed by its namesake, Nobel Laureate William Sharpe, this measure quantifies a fund's return in excess of a risk-free investment (Morningstar Asia currently uses a risk-free rate of zero) relative to its risk (or standard deviation).
Sharpe ratio is calculated using standard deviation and excess return to determine reward per unit of risk. First, the risk-free rate is subtracted from the fund's average monthly return. The difference in total return represents the fund's excess return beyond that of the risk-free rate. An arithmetic annualized excess return is then calculated by multiplying this monthly return by 12. To show a relationship between excess return and risk, this number is then divided by the standard deviation of the fund's annualized excess returns. The higher the Sharpe ratio, the better the fund's historical risk-adjusted performance is.