Morningstar has created a new international stock category: Miscellaneous. These funds don't fit cleanly into any existing category because they focus on one country or a small region like the Nordic nations or Europe's emerging markets, Morningstar's senior fund analyst Gregg Wolper explained. There weren't enough funds for Canada, Indonesia or the Gulf States to create a category for any one of those types of funds, so Morningstar has separated these funds to allow other fund categories to be clearer and more accurate, unclouded by the niches.

The new category doesn't allow investors to compare similar funds against one another, such as India or China fund categories, and it will be the only category arranged with the intent to make other categories clearer, Wolper said. These funds won't get the benefits and downsides to receiving Morningstar ratings because none of them are similar enough to be compared against the other. Return rankings and portfolio data will be available, however.

Among some of the stock funds are BlackRock's [profile] iShares MSCI Germany Index, Fidelity [profile] Canada and Van Eck's [profile] Market Vectors Indonesia Small-Cap ETF.

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Edited by: Casey Quinlan


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