Returns or yields for the fund would have been lower if a portion of the management fee had not been waived. Review the annual or semiannual report for the most current information.
International investing involves special risks, such as political instability and currency fluctuations. Investing in emerging markets may accentuate these risks.
Please see the prospectus for details about sales charges.
The gross expense ratio is the fund's total annual operating costs, expressed as a percentage of the fund's average net assets for a given time period. It is gross of any fee waivers or expense reimbursement. The net expense ratio is the expense ratio after the application of any waivers or reimbursement. This is the actual ratio that investors paid during the fund's most recent fiscal year. Please see the prospectus for more information.
Investor Class Shares: Minimum initial investment is $1,000 for IRA and CESA accounts, and $2,500 for non-retirement accounts, but these minimums are waived with an initial investment of at least $500 per account and automatic investments of at least $100 per month. Non-Retirement Accounts: If your account balance falls below the minimum, or if you cancel your automatic monthly investment plan prior to reaching the minimum, American Century Investments may redeem the account and send the proceeds to you. Prior to doing so, we will notify you and give you 90 days to meet the minimum or reinstate your automatic monthly investment plan.
Only Investor Class shares are made available to investors directly. Advisor, A, C, I, and Y Classes of shares are only available for purchase by institutions or other financial intermediaries. R, R5, and R6 Classes of shares are only available for purchase by group employer-sponsored retirement plans. Review definitions and minimums for all share classes.
Many of American Century's investment strategies incorporate the consideration of environmental, social, and/or governance (ESG) factors into their investment processes in addition to traditional financial analysis. However, when doing so, the portfolio managers may not consider ESG factors with respect to every investment decision and, even when such factors are considered, they may conclude that other attributes of an investment outweigh ESG considerations when making decisions for the portfolio. The consideration of ESG factors may limit the investment opportunities available to a portfolio, and the portfolio may perform differently than those that do not incorporate ESG considerations. ESG data used by the portfolio managers often lacks standardization, consistency, and transparency, and for certain companies such data may not be available, complete, or accurate.
Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) Criteria
The risk and/or opportunity to a company's market valuation resulting from environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. Depending on the sector, environmental and social factors include, but are not limited to, 1) climate change, 2) water stress, 3) product safety and quality (supply chain and manufacturing), 4) cybersecurity and data privacy, and 5) human capital management. Regardless of the sector, governance factors include: 1) business (mis)conduct, 2) board composition, independence and entrenchment, 3) accounting practices, 4) ownership structure, and 5) executive pay-for-sustainability performance alignment.
Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) Integration
The structural incorporation of financially-relevant information on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors into the investment decision-making process.
MSCI Emerging Markets Index
A free float-adjusted market capitalization index that is designed to measure equity market performance of emerging markets.
Definitions
Alpha: Typically used to represent the value added or subtracted by active investment management strategies. It shows how an actively managed investment portfolio performed compared with the expected portfolio returns produced simply by benchmark volatility (beta) and market changes. A positive alpha shows that an investment manager has been able to capture more of the upside movement in the benchmark while softening the downswings. A negative alpha means that the manager's strategies have caught more benchmark downside than upside.
Beta: Standard measurement of potential investment risk and return. It shows how volatile a security's or an investment portfolio's returns have been compared with their respective benchmark indices. A benchmark index's beta always equals 1. A security or portfolio with a beta greater than 1 had returns that fluctuated more, both up and down, than those of its benchmark, while a beta of less than 1 indicates less fluctuation than the benchmark.
R-Squared: Portfolio performance and risk measure that indicates how much of a portfolio's performance fluctuations were attributable to movements in the portfolio's benchmark index. R-squared can range from 0-100%. An r-squared of 100% indicates that all portfolio performance movements were attributable to movements in the benchmark index-they correlate perfectly to the benchmark. Conversely, an r-squared of 0% indicates that there is no correlation between the performance movements of the portfolio and the benchmark.
Standard Deviation: Statistical measurement of variations from the average. In financial literature, it's often used to measure risk, when risk is measured or defined in terms of volatility. In general, more risk means more volatility, and more volatility means a higher standard deviation-there's more variation from the average of the data being measured. In this context, reducing risk means seeking lower standard deviation.
Sharpe Ratio: Simple but useful risk-adjusted measure of returns, showing the amount of return (reward) earned per unit of risk from any asset with a risk component. The higher the Sharpe Ratio, the better, theoretically, the portfolio's risk-adjusted performance-portfolios with higher Sharpe Ratios tend to provide more return for the same amount of risk. The Sharpe Ratio is useful, but not perfect. It can be skewed by irregular return factors that can upset the standard deviation calculation, and it doesn't take into account the market risk (beta) exposure of the portfolio.
Investment Blend: Reflects the blend of securities owned by a fund. For example, the percentage of foreign or domestic stocks held by an equity fund or the percentage of corporate and government securities owned by a bond fund. The U.S./Foreign Convertibles grouping includes Convertible Bonds, Equity Linked Securities and Convertible Preferred securities.
Sector Weights: This value represents the sectors included in the portfolio on a percent of assets basis.
Top Holdings: This value represents the top holdings included in the portfolio on a percent of assets basis. Equity holdings are grouped to include common shares, depository receipts, rights and warrants issued by the same company. Holdings are rounded to the nearest whole number, which may result in the display of less than ten holdings.
Countries: This value represents the countries included in the portfolio on a percent of assets basis.
Regions: This value represents the regions of the country represented by the securities included in the portfolio on a percent of assets basis.
For detailed descriptions of indices or investing terms referenced above, refer to our glossary.
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