My last post asked Mutual Funds – Should You Pay Extra for Active Management? As a follow-up I am taking a look at an actively managed Large Growth fund that was once a top-flight performer, but has really slipped in recent years.
Readers of this blog may note that two of the most popular posts have dealt with the American Funds in the context of their use in 401(k) plans. American Funds Growth remains a major holding across the 401(k) universe.
The asset base of American Funds Growth (across all share classes) is huge at just over $116 billion, but it is down considerably from its 2007 high of about $202 billion. Still the fund remains the largest in the Large Growth category.
Let’s compare Growth’s A Share class with the Investor Share Class (the most expensive) of the Vanguard Growth Index Fund.
The A shares have a low expense ratio of 0.68%, but the Vanguard fund’s expense ratio is 0.24%. The average fund/ETF in this category had an expense ratio of 1.22% as of June 30. Note the A shares carry a front-end sales charge; the returns below do not reflect this.
|
YTD |
12 months |
3 years |
5 years |
10 years |
|
|
Amer. Funds Growth |
17.86% |
27.94% |
10.03% |
0.06% |
8.72% |
|
VG Growth Index |
18.20% |
31.08% |
14.90% |
3.39% |
8.22% |
As of September 30, 2012 – courtesy of Morningstar.
A Former Star Performer
The superior performance of American Funds Growth over the ten-year period is consistent with the fund’s annual performance. From 2002-2006 the fund outperformed the Growth Index fund during each of these years. Further the fund ranked no worse than the top 18% of all of the funds in the Large Growth Category.
A Fall From Grace
Since 2006, the story is a different one. American Funds Growth has lagged the Growth Index fund in each of these years. Further the fund has ranked in the lower half of the Large Growth category in 3 of those 5 years. For the three years ended September 30 the fund ranks in the 74th percentile (bottom 24%) of the Large Growth category. The fund ranks in the 68th percentile for the trailing five years and the 24th percentile for the trailing ten years.
A Closet Index Fund?
While American Funds Growth’s expenses are generally reasonable (though not for some of the share classes that are sold via the broker channel) what are you getting by paying the extra cost? Further, the fund’s R-Squared (a measure of correlation) with the Russell 1000 Growth Index over the past three years is over 97%.
Essentially the fund has become a closet indexer with lagging performance and higher expenses. I’m not saying American Funds Growth will never be a consistent long-term performer again, nobody can predict the future. I respect the American Funds as an organization. But why invest in a closest index fund when you can invest in the real thing? If your broker or registered rep tries to convince you otherwise ask them the same question.
Please feel free to contact me with your investing and financial planning questions.
For you do-it-yourselfers, check out Morningstar.com to analyze your investments and to get a free trial for their premium services.
Photo credit: Flickr
I play tennis on a regular basis with one of the board members and have always marveled at how great they’ve been able to gather assets. They’ve got an excellent LT track record, and hire some very bright people. Size is an issue to continue performance, so they take a multiple Portfolio Counselor approach to managing a fund.
The entire Capital Group manages over 1 trillion I believe.
Thanks for the comment. I agree that Capital Group is an excellent organization and many of their funds have solid LT track records with reasonable expenses (in many of the share classes). Of the people I have met from the organization over the years I would say that all have been bright and good at their jobs. No fund company offers top choices in every share class, but American Funds overall does a nice job. As for the Growth Fund my concern was middling performance at the time I wrote this piece, much of which I would attribute to the size of the fund. The question to me with any active fund in this asset class is are you better off with a lower cost index fund. In the case of this fund its a bit of a toss-up the past few years.