By Lauren Young

A Strong Track Record

Not many people would relish launching a mutual fund in the midst of a global economic crisis. But for emerging-markets veteran Josephine Jiménez, who rolled out the Victoria 1522 Fund (VMDAX) on Oct. 1, economic crises are old hat.

In 1992, Jiménez launched the Montgomery Emerging Markets Fund (MFFAX)—the first no-load emerging-markets fund in the U.S. She spent more than 15 years at the helm of that portfolio, which graced the top of the performance charts throughout her reign. Jiménez is credited for calling the 1997 Asian currency crisis one year before the crisis actually hit—she became alarmed by the "frightful levels of construction" as she looked out a Bangkok hotel window and lost count of the inordinate number of cranes that graced the skyline. She wondered who was going to buy or occupy all that property and decided that a banking crisis would inevitably unfold.

Jiménez also predicted the Mexican peso meltdown of December 1994, six months prior to the currency blowup, after a trip to the Mexican state of Chiapas. Her conclusion from that journey has been documented in Mexico's economic and political journals.

In 2006, at age 52, Jiménez left Wells Capital Management, which had acquired Montgomery in 2003, to start her own money-management firm, Victoria 1522.

BusinessWeek Personal Finance Editor Lauren Young has been tracking Jiménez's moves since the new fund's launch. (Jiménez's fund and firm, Victoria 1522, are named after the first ship to circumnavigate the globe, and the year of the achievement, as part of explorer Ferdinand Magellan's fleet.) Here is a look at the fund's first four months.