T. Rowe Price Emerging Markets Stock Fund (PRMSX)

T. Rowe Price Emerging Markets Stock Fund (PRMSX) is a top equity mutual fund. This investment fund invests in emerging markets.

Investing in emerging markets equity funds has become more popular nowadays. The performance of this asset class has been astounding. For the past decade, this emerging market has been the leader 6 out of 10 times in term of performance return. More details about this performance can be found in the latest Callan Periodic Table of Investment Returns of 2010. The largest investment return occurred in 2009 for 79.02%.

The following article will provide one of the most consistent emerging market stock funds, T Rowe Price Emerging Markets Stock fund.

T. Rowe Price Emerging Markets Stock (PRMSX)

Investment in T. Rowe Price Emerging Stock fund is looking for capital growth in long-term period. The majority of the net assets (at least 80%) are invested in emerging markets in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. This fund mainly invests in common stocks. It may as well purchase the stocks of companies in any size. The assets allocation as per December 31, 2010 is 94.4% in foreign stocks, 4.2% in preferred stocks and 1.4% in cash.

PRMSX Fund Details

• Fund Inception Date: March 1995
• Ticker Symbol: PRMSX
• CUSIP: 77956H864
• Beta: 1.12
• Rank in Category: 31 (ytd)
• Category: Diversified Emerging Markets
• Distribution / Yield: 0.43%
• Capital Gains: The dividends and capital gains are distributed annually
• Numbers of Years Up: 10
• Numbers of Years Down: 5
• Fund Manager: Gonzalo Pangaro
• Net Assets: $8.0 Billion
• Expense Fee: 1.26%
• Min to Invest: $2,500
• Turnover rate: 24%

The returns performance of this PRMSX fund is 16.00% over the past one year and 8.12% over the past five years. Since the inception, PRMSX has experienced 10 years up and 5 years down, with the average 5-year average return of 8.12%. T. Rowe Price Emerging Markets Stock has given 87.44% as the best in 1-year total return in 1999 and -60.54% as the worst 1-year total return in 2008. In Morningstar, PRMSX gets the 4-stars rating.

• Year 2017: 16.29% (YTD)
• Year 2016: 11.94%
• Year 2015: -11.49%
• Year 2014: 1.41%
• Year 2013: 20.03%

This fund is managed by Gonzalo Pangaro since September 2008. The minimum balance to invest in this fund is $2,500 for brokerage account and $1,000 for IRA account. The brokerage account requires $100 for the minimum subsequent investment and $50 for IRA account. There are 73 brokerages that sells PRMSX fund. There is no 12b1 fee and no sales load as well. This fund applies no transaction fee, but there is a redemption fee of 2% on shares held 90 days or less. The expense ratio of this fund is 1.27% annually. This fund has no other class.

Top International Stock Fund

As of March 31, 2011, this PRMSX fund had a total of 121 holdings. The top 10 holdings represents 25.82% of the total net assets. They are America Movil, Banco Bradesco, CNOOC, Itau Unibanco Holding, LG Household & Health Care, Petroleo Brasileiro, Samsung Electronics Co, Sberbank of Russia, Vale and Wal-Mart de Mexico.

The annual holdings turnover of this fund as per October 2010 was 26.60% with the average in the category of 78.41%. The top 5 sector diversifications of this fund as of February 28, 2011 are Financials, Information Technology, Material, Energy and Consumer Staples. As mentioned above, this fund focuses in emerging market countries, with the following regional exposure: Pacific exclude Japan (50.7%), Latin America (28.4%), Europe (13.3%) and Middle East & Africa (5.2%). The top 3 countries on the list are China, Brazil and South Korea.

Disclosure: No Position

This T. Rowe Price fund is also part of the Kiplinger 25 Best mutual fund of 2011. The fund in this list is also known as Kip 25 fund. If you are interested in other Kip25 fund, please check my other articles. For the fund performance and fund information comparison, please check my Kip 25 Best Fund page.

Note: T. Rowe Price Emerging Markets Stock Fund (PRMSX) was part of Kiplinger's Best Mutual Funds before.