JPMorgan Asia Growth & Income
Why is this fund on our radar?
Asia is home to some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, a rapidly expanding middle class and companies at the forefront of technology – all of which adds up to a wealth of investment opportunity. JPMorgan Asia Growth & Income (Ticker: JAGI), managed by Robert Lloyd and Pauline Ng, aims to help investors tap into these trends through a strategy designed to grow their money over time whilst also paying a regular income. For that purpose, they invest in 50 to 80 companies that are financially robust and profitable yet, importantly, have room to grow further, drawing not only on their vast experience in the industry but via the extensive research team at JPMorgan Asset Management – something we believe is particularly valuable in a region as vast and diverse as Asia.
Since Robert took over in 2018, JAGI has outperformed the broader Asia market (to the end of June 2026), beating it most calendar years along the way. Crucially, that’s not the product of big bets on a single country or sector: Robert and Pauline prefer to let their stock selection do the work instead. This means that at times the portfolio is not wildly divergent from what you’d get from a passive approach which replicates the market, but it’s a good illustration of consistent, if modest, outperformance compounding into meaningfully higher returns than you’d get from a passive approach over time.
Skip to Our VerdictPerformance
Whilst JAGI's returns from one year to the next have tended not to differ dramatically from those of the wider Asian stock market, we think it has demonstrated a consistently good run of performance. Since 2018, the point at which Robert was appointed manager, JAGI has outperformed the wider market in seven of the past nine calendar years, including the first half of 2026, which together has added up to significantly higher returns than both the wider Asian market and passive funds tracking it, over this period.
Fundamentally, Robert and Pauline are bottom-up stock pickers, meaning they build the portfolio up from the companies they believe have the strongest potential to deliver on their objectives for investors over time, rather than betting on which Asian country or industry will come out on top.
Technology makes up roughly half of JAGI's portfolio, which is in line with its weight in the wider Asian market rather than a deliberate bet on the sector. Even so, it's likely to have a big say in returns going forward simply because it's such a large slice of the portfolio. Fast-growing profits here tend to feed through quickly into share prices, and AI-related names, particularly in Taiwan and South Korea, have been among the strongest contributors to JAGI's return over the past year. The flip side is that tech shares can swing hard when things go wrong. As of 30/06/2026, the managers had allocated roughly the same proportion of the portfolio to this sector as the broader market, rather than betting heavily for or against it.
JAGI is also slightly overweight Chinese stocks versus passive funds. The managers see opportunity here after several difficult years, particularly as China pushes for greater self-reliance in areas like technology, though Beijing's history of abrupt, industry-wide rule changes remains a risk. China has also lagged both the broader Asian and emerging market universe since the start of 2026, resulting in more attractive share prices. India gets the opposite treatment: JAGI holds less than passive funds do, as Robert and Pauline see valuations as too rich, meaning less room for share prices to climb, and some risk of missing out if India outperforms the rest of the region.
Calendar-year returns
Source: Morningstar
Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results
Portfolio
The goal isn't just to beat the market when conditions are good, but to build something that holds up reasonably well across different types of market. That's part of why Robert and Pauline spread the portfolio across 50 to 80 companies rather than concentrating on a handful of high-conviction picks, each with room to contribute without making or breaking overall returns. More than 100 investment professionals across nine locations at JPMorgan Asset Management do the groundwork behind those picks. We believe this level of resource is particularly important in a region as vast and diverse as Asia, where countries differ greatly in their stage of development, economic model, and culture.
The managers choose companies based on their individual merits rather than simply because of where they are based or the industry they operate in. Robert and Pauline also favour companies that are well positioned to benefit from long-term trends across the region, such as increasing urbanisation, rising incomes, and technological progress. In practice, that shows up most clearly at the country level: Taiwan and South Korea are JAGI's largest allocations, reflecting how central they are to the Asian stock market as major technology hubs and home to some of the world's most significant companies.
Where JAGI differs slightly from the broader Asian stock market is in China and India. The former, where Robert and Pauline have recently invested more, is where they see a wide pool of opportunities, notably in technology, as China aims to become more self-reliant in this area. The managers believe the opportunities in India, by contrast, tend to be too expensive, that many businesses in this country could face challenges as AI becomes more widely used and that the oil shock presents a particular near-term challenge for India given high energy import dependence.
Country weights
Source: JPMorgan
Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results
Our Verdict
So who might JAGI suit? In our view, quite a wide range of investors. Asia remains one of the most dynamic regions in the world, riding several powerful growth trends, and JAGI offers a way to tap into that potential. Investors focused on growing their wealth over time may find this long-term growth story appealing. At the same time, because JAGI also aims to pay a regular income, it could give income-focused investors a route into Asia, a region where companies typically pay low dividends, if any at all.
Given Robert and Pauline's avoidance of strong bets on any specific country or industry, performance may be roughly similar to that of a passively managed fund over the short term. However, as its track record since 2018 demonstrates, that's a trade-off that has worked in investors' favour so far, coming without the wild swings that may follow a highly concentrated strategy investing in a small number of companies.
Overall, we think JAGI could work well alongside a broader global portfolio, complementing funds focusing on other global markets like the UK or US. Because Asian stocks often behave differently from those markets, adding JAGI to a portfolio could help improve diversification – think eggs and baskets, or more specifically more than one egg in more than one basket. Alternatively, we think it could serve as a core holding for Asia, complemented by more adventurous strategies for investors interested in exploring further opportunities in the region.
Key Risks
- May perform less well when one country or industry drives most of the market’s gains
- Asian stocks tend to see sharper swings in value more often than their American or European peers
- As an investment trust, JAGI can use gearing, or debt, to invest which can amplify both returns and losses
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