"The biggest difference between the two is that Fidelity Latin America is focused mainly on Latin America's major exporters, while Price Latin America is centered more on domestic growth in the region.

"Both funds are heavily weighted with Brazil stocks (67% for Fidelity Latin American and 65% for Price Latin America). After a rough 2008, Brazil's stock market is poised for a solid recovery, perhaps as early as this year.

"Falling commodity prices and investor panic lopped nearly 60% off the value of Brazil's stock market in the second half of last year, taming valuations that had grown too large even for an economy with Brazil's vast potential.

"Manager Adam Kutas'current stint on Fidelity Latin America just began in February 2009, but he was a co-manager of the fund for atwo-year period from 2005 to 2007 and has experience as an analyst and manager of other funds.

"His previous run as Latin America's co-manager was a particularly good one for the fund (and for Latin America funds in general): Fidelity Latin America gained 55.6% on an annualized basis during that time.

"Kutas'predecessor kept the fund's performance strong relative to peers over the past tumultuous year with a generally careful approach, looking for seemingly undervalued stocks and making few bets against the country or sector allocations of the bench-mark MSCI Latin America Index.

"That approach still socked the fund with a nearly 55% loss in 2008; even so, that was in the middle of the emerging-markets-stock fund pack. In the first three months of 2009, the fund is up 2.2%, vs. 7.8% and 0.7% for iShares MSCI Brazil and the iShares S&PLatin America 40 ETF, respectively.

"Don't expect Kutas to deviate from that approach significantly. The portfolio remains heavily invested in most of the region's heavyweight companies. Brazil's Petrobras and Vale are present, as is America Movil, the Mexico-based wireless company that serves all of Latin America.

"Brazil's largest banks, which should benefit from increasing adoption of financial services and products among its growing middle class, round out the top 10 holdings, along with Walmex, the Wal-Mart of Mexico.

"This portfolio is, like its benchmark, heaviest in materials (about 25% of the portfolio), energy (18%), financials (15%) and telecommunications (13%). The top 10 positions account for nearly half of the 88-stock portfolio, which, in addition to the 67% position in Brazilian equities, also offers significant exposure to Mexico (about 18%) and Chile (4%).

"The new manager at T. Rowe Price Latin America, Jose Buck, lacks experience as a lead portfolio manager. However, he has a long record as an analyst specializing in Latin America stocks under the fund's previous manager.

"His predecessor, Gonzalo Pangaro, remains in an oversight position for the fund, and Buck is supported by T. Rowe Price's extensive emerging-markets research operation. As with the Fidelity offering, don't expect Buck to alter the fund's strategy much going forward.

"The strategy here is more growth-oriented than at Fidelity: the fund is populated with Latin America's blue chips (Petrobras, Vale, Walmex and the Brazilian banks are present in this portfolio also), but sectors with stronger growth potential have bigger weightings. Financial-services stocks make up 21%, and consumer-oriented stocks account for 17%.

"Along with this longer-term growth perspective comes more patience with individual holdings; turnover has only averaged about 25% a year. Over the fund's history, that seems to have been aprofitable approach. Even with 2008's heavy loss (down 56% for the year), the fund's five-year-annualized return is 15.6%.

"Of course, that conviction in its stock picks could have compounded the fund's problems in 2008 as it continued to hold sharply declining stocks in the face of extreme investor disfavor.

"Price Latin America is also much more concentrated than its Fidelity counterpart. The fund has only about 45 positions, the top 10 of which make up more than 60% of the portfolio.

"The fund also includes meaningful exposure to Mexico (about 22% of the portfolio), Chile (5%) and Peru (4%). Its expense ratio is 1.22%, vs. 1.02% for Fidelity Latin America. Latin America was one of the world's best-performing regions from 2003 to 2007.

"Fidelity Latin America averaged a 50.0% gain in that period, while Price Latin America averaged a 51.3% gain. However, after the huge hits they took in 2008, they are attractive now. Their price/earnings ratios are way down, for example, which makes the funds buyable."

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