Global Equity

There’s a large universe of global small caps to invest in, so we take a deep dive into all of the companies we own and make a concerted effort to know the management teams and business cases, to better understand where each company is going. Those elements will drive future performance.

The firm is run by investment professionals who understand what is required to have a successful investment process. Thus, they are in a position to provide the resources the investment teams need to deliver results.

GW&K focuses on niche products that generate excess returns for our clients. We do not chase the same returns clients can get anywhere else in the market.

We really focus on intellectual freedom and intellectual honesty. We come from different backgrounds and have different experiences, but we love what we do. We love the research process. Each of us is encouraged to think through ideas from different angles, which helps to check for behavioral and cognitive biases, and we believe ultimately results in better returns for our clients.

Investing in small cap international markets is an important way for clients to diversify their portfolios, and yet, most are quite underexposed to this market segment.

The domestic industries of countries outside of the U.S. are generally much smaller than those in the U.S. Thus, by definition, the companies in those markets tend to be smaller. If investors are not exposed to the international small cap markets, they tend to miss out on gaining this exposure to truly diversify their portfolios.

Small caps are interesting because we can find dislocations between price and value for a variety of reasons — such as diminished sell-side coverage and an increase in passive management — so there’s a lot of information and efficiencies we believe we can exploit over three- and five-year periods.

Our bottom up process focuses on discovering unknown or underappreciated companies. The international small cap markets are under-researched. We thrive at getting ahead of other investors to find stocks that we believe have the potential for strong growth.

What differentiates our approach to international investing is that we own a collection of companies in which we have done the underlying research, and that we believe have excellent growth potential and have not been picked over by other investors.