NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Fund manager Steven Bregman recalled a time when Lebanon was the French Riviera of the Middle East and Beirut was another Paris.
Fifteen years of war destroyed the country and its capital, but Bregman is betting on a Lebanese company that is helping to rebuild it.
"The Middle East is a unique area of the globe, and there are some fascinating things going on," said Bregman, manager of the new Middle East Growth Fund.
Also in this column: Low-cost Vanguard cuts fees even more; and TIAA-CREF introduces new funds.
The fund is the latest offering from Kinetics Asset Management, the investment firm that introduced the high-flying Internet Fund, one of the first Net funds to debut in 1996.
"Kinetics in its short life has been building a reputation for being early in certain markets," Bregman said. "If you're in a market that hasn't been discovered yet, there's real potential."
 Among the fund's top holdings is the Lebanese company, Solidere. Property owners in Beirut contributed their properties to the company in exchange for shares. The government gave the company the authority to rebuild Beirut, including renovation of a marina and the old Arab souk shopping area.
"The company trades at a deep discount to the value of the properties," Bregman said.
Another unusual holding is Palestinian Development and Industrial Co., which has a controlling interest in all but one of the dozen stocks that trade on the Palestinian Stock Exchange, he said. It owns a minority stake in the 12th stock, Palestinian Telecom.
But the fund's major focus will be Israel and Egypt, the largest markets in the Middle East.
Among Israeli stocks, the fund owns Orchid, which makes chips that allow you to talk on the phone and dial up high-speed Internet access at the same time. The chips allow old-fashioned copper wires to have two frequencies - one for voice, and a higher frequency for data.
Orchid, like many Israeli companies, trades in the U.S. market rather than in Israel. Many high-tech Israeli companies prefer to debut on Wall Street, where the IPO price may be three times higher, he said.
But Israeli companies will often have a lower price-earnings ratio (the p/e is the stock price divided by the earnings-per-share) because of the political uncertainty in the region. Internet Fund has also owned some Israeli stocks, he said.
 In Egypt, another holding is El Ahram Beverage -- described by Bregman as a cross between Anheuser Busch and Coca-Cola. The company makes non-alcoholic wine and beer to accommodate Muslim law.
"It's not a monopoly, but it comes close," Bregman said.
A lasting peace would create even more potential, he said. For example, Israeli businesses ship some diamonds to India for polishing because of India's ready pool of cheap labor. But someday those diamonds could go to nearby Jordan, which also has a work force of inexpensive labor.
"The intriguing thing about the Middle East is there's a very unusual divide between countries that are side by side," Bregman said. "Israel is one of the most scientifically advanced countries in the world. On the other hand, you have Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, that are like Third World countries. So there's an emerging-markets aspect to it and a technology aspect."
The fund, which has a few hundred thousand dollars in assets and doesn't yet have a ticker symbol, is off a little since it started trading in the last few weeks. Bregman said the fund is following the performance of the Israeli market, which fell about 3 percent on Monday in anticipation of Nasdaq declines.
Bregman, who spent some of his childhood in Israel, admits the region fascinates him.
"If you walk in Jerusalem you're walking on stones that are 5,000 years old," Bregman said. "You can almost hear the Roman footsteps behind you."
Vanguard has eliminated transaction fees on the purchase of five stock index funds, including Vanguard Extended Market Fund; Small-Cap Fund; European Fund, Pacific Fund, and Total International Fund.
The fund giant also reduced fees on its Vanguard Emerging Markets Fund, Tax-Managed International Fund, and Tax-Managed Small-Cap Fund.
TIAA-CREF, the $288 billion teachers' pension fund and investment management company, is venturing further into the retail mutual fund market with five new mutual funds.
The new funds include TIAA-CREF Equity Index Fund, High-Yield Bond Fund, Tax-Exempt Bond Fund, Short-Term Bond Fund, and Social Choice Equity Fund, a socially responsible fund that screens out stocks such as tobacco and weapons manufacturers.
TIAA-CREF also introduced four annuities, including Growth & Income Account, International Equity Account, Growth Equity Account and Social Choice Equity Account. 
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