Playing the Waiting Game With Foreign Stocks

MICHAEL CANTARA CERTAINLY UNDERSTANDS why the mood has soured against international stocks and portfolios like the USAA International Fund (ticker: USIFX).

With five straight years of strong positive annual performance, the fund is down 42% year-to-date, as a credit crisis has given way to a global economic downturn that shows few signs of ending anytime soon.

But Cantara, an institutional portfolio manager with MFS Investment Management, the subadviser to the USAA fund, sees stocks worth owning at beaten-down prices.

Though stock prices could continue to fall in Europe and Asia, a patient investor with a four- or five-year investment horizon ...