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In terms of country allocation, how is the fund currently positioned?
Our biggest emphasis today is in the countries of central and eastern Europe. We believe the economic, political, and social benefits these countries will achieve by integrating into the European Union will provide investors with substantial investment opportunities for many years to come. In the near term, this will help the region navigate through a potential global economic slowdown. We also like that this region is not dependent on U.S. consumption or Asian investment demand for growth, two bubbles we think will prove challenging to investors for the next couple of years.

Our favorite countries in this region are the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, and Hungary, and our favorite sector is the financial sector. Financials are benefiting from greater integration with western Europe, such as sponsorship from western European banks. One example is Komercni Banka, which is majority owned by Société Générale of France. It's also the third-largest Czech bank. The bank recently reported its first-quarter results, which showed continued strong growth and no impact from the subprime debt crisis.

Any other countries you're excited about?
While we have little exposure to China due to the imbalances there, we've recently been increasing our allocation to Taiwan, which has a new government in place. We think there will be long-term benefits to Taiwan's economy from its new attitude of cooperation, such as increased exports to China as well as increased tourism from the Chinese. Also, Taiwan's stock market has been a regional laggard over the last few years, so we think that this new development will allow Taiwanese stocks to play catch-up. Our approach to investing in this country has been to buy a basket of Taiwanese stocks, instead of focusing on a few names, since we think the benefits to its economy will be broad based.