classes, including U.S. Treasury securities, can deteriorate rapidly, particularly during times of market turmoil, and those investments may be difficult or impossible for the fund to sell. This may prevent the fund from limiting losses.
Valuation - Certain investments may be more difficult to value than other types of investments. The sales price the fund could receive for any particular portfolio investment may differ from the fund's valuation of the investment, particularly for securities that trade in thin or volatile markets, that are priced based upon valuations provided by third party pricing services, or that are valued using a fair value methodology. These differences may increase significantly and affect fund investments more broadly during periods of market volatility. Investors who purchase or redeem fund shares on days when the fund is holding fair-valued securities may receive fewer or more shares or lower or higher redemption proceeds than they would have received if the fund had not fair-valued securities or had used a different valuation methodology. The fund's ability to value its investments may also be impacted by technological issues and/or errors by pricing services or other third party service providers. Fair value pricing involves subjective judgment, which may prove to be incorrect.
Focused Investing - To the extent the fund invests in a limited number of countries, regions, sectors, industries or market segments, in a limited number of issuers, or in issuers in related businesses or that are subject to related operating risks, the fund will be more susceptible to negative events affecting those countries, regions, sectors, industries, segments or issuers, and the value of its shares may be more volatile than if it invested more widely.
Management - The value of your investment may go down if the investment manager's or sub-adviser's judgments and decisions are incorrect or otherwise do not produce the desired results, or if the investment strategy does not work as intended. You may also suffer losses if there are imperfections, errors or limitations in the quantitative, analytic or other tools, resources, information and data used, investment techniques applied, or the analyses employed or relied on, by the investment manageror sub-adviser, if such tools, resources, information or data are used incorrectly or otherwise do not work as intended, or if the investment manager's or sub-adviser's investment style is out of favor or otherwise fails to produce the desired results. Any of these things could cause the fund to lose value or its results to lag relevant benchmarks or other funds with similar objectives.
Active Trading - The fund may engage in active trading of its portfolio. Active trading will increase transaction costs and could detract from performance. Active trading may be more pronounced during periods of market volatility and may generate greater amounts of short-term capital gains.
Cybersecurity - Cybersecurity incidents, both intentional and unintentional, may allow an unauthorized party to gain access to fund assets, fund or shareholder data (including private shareholder information), or proprietary information, cause the fund or its service providers (including, but not limited to, the fund's investment manager, any sub-adviser(s), transfer agent, distributor, custodian, fund accounting agent and financial intermediaries) to suffer data breaches, data corruption or loss of operational functionality, or prevent fund investors from purchasing, redeeming or exchanging shares, receiving distributions or receiving timely information regarding the fund or their investment in the fund.
Cybersecurity incidents may result in financial losses to the fund and its shareholders, and substantial costs may be incurred in order to prevent or mitigate any future cybersecurity incidents.
Depositary Receipts - Depositary receipts are generally subject to the same risks as are the foreign securities that they evidence or into which they may be converted, and they may be less liquid than the underlying shares in their primary trading market. In addition, depositary receipts expose the fund to risk associated with the non-uniform terms that apply to depositary receipt programs, credit exposure to the depositary bank and to the sponsors and other parties with whom the depositary bank establishes the programs. Holders of depositary receipts may have limited voting rights, and investment restrictions in certain countries may adversely impact the value of depositary receipts because such restrictions may limit the ability to convert equity shares into depositary receipts and vice versa.
Emerging Markets - Investments in securities of issuers located or doing business in emerging markets are subject to heightened foreign investments risks and may experience rapid and extreme changes in value. Emerging market countries tend to have less developed and less stable economic, political and legal systems and regulatory and accounting standards, may have policies that restrict investment by foreigners or that prevent foreign investors such as the fund from withdrawing their money at will, and are more likely to experience nationalization, expropriation and confiscatory taxation. Emerging market securities may have low trading volumes and may be or become illiquid. In addition, there may be significant obstacles to obtaining information necessary for investigations into or litigation against issuers located in or operating in emerging market countries, and shareholders may have limited legal remedies.
Large Shareholder - A significant portion of the fund's shares may be owned by one or more investment vehicles or institutional investors. Transactions by these large shareholders may be disruptive to the management of the fund. For example, the fund may experience large redemptions and could be required to sell securities at a time when it may not otherwise desire to do so. Such transactions may increase the fund's brokerage and/or other transaction costs. These transactions may also accelerate the realization of taxable capital gains to shareholders if such sales of investments result in capital gains. In addition, sizeable redemptions could cause the fund's total expenses to increase.
Performance:The bar chart and the table below provide some indication of the risks of investing in the fund. The bar chart shows how the fund's performance has varied from year to year. The table shows how the fund's average annual total returns for different periods compare to the returns of a broad measure of market performance.
As with all mutual funds, past performance (before and after taxes) is not a prediction of future results. Updated performance information is available on our website at www.transamerica.com/investments-fund-center or by calling 1-888-233-4339.