Trade Wars? Three Funds Made Solid Profits Anyway

With rumblings about trade wars, post-Brexit predictions of the demise of the European Union and worries over North Korean nuclear missiles, lately the world beyond the United States has hardly seemed a promising place to invest.

Yet some investors toted up solid returns in the second quarter — as well as over the last five years — by prospecting, at least partly, abroad. Here are three mutual funds that managed that feat.

Matthews China Small Companies Fund

The name of Tiffany Hsiao’s fund — Matthews China Small Companies — makes plain where she puts her shareholders’ money. China, of course, is one of the countries on which President Trump has focused much of his anti-trade ire. As a result, the United States and China have been tit-for-tatting each other with tariffs.

Ms. Hsiao, who has been lead manager of the fund since 2015, said the sorts of stocks she seeks are insulated from spats over international commerce. “Small-cap companies are more domestically focused,” she said. “They’re not typically exporters. In the United States, you see the same thing.”

T. Rowe Price Global Stock Fund

David J. Eiswert, portfolio manager of T. Rowe Price Global Stock Fund, enjoys a broader remit than Ms. Hsiao: He’s free to survey the world in search of promising bets. His fund has lately invested about two-thirds of its assets in the United States.

“We’re usually overweight the U.S. because that’s where the best intellectual property is,” Mr. Eiswert said. “But after the Trump victory, we went underweight because stocks went up so much, and emerging markets were in crisis.”