JPMorgan Asia Growth & Income (JAGI)

Managers Robert Lloyd and Pauline Ng have looked to capitalise on Asia’s growing tech opportunity for JPMorgan Asia Growth & Income (JAGI). Using a bottom-up, stock selection focussed approach, they have invested in several highly innovative firms across the region, including world-leading companies in the Korean and Taiwanese markets, as well as the growing domestic supply chain in China. Crucially, the managers are also conscious there will be losers from the AI trade, which has led to some important underweight positions, such as through several Indian IT services companies (see Portfolio).

These portfolio tilts have been beneficial to near-term Performance, with the trust outperforming the strong rally seen across the region over the past year (to 03/06/2026). The managers’ aim is for stock selection to be the primary driver of performance over the long term, which has contributed to the trust’s NAV outperforming its benchmark at an annualised rate of 2.4% over the past ten years to 31/01/2026.

Despite Robert and Pauline’s tilt towards growth-focussed technology firms at present, the trust still has a high yield of c. 6%. This is a result of the enhanced Dividend policy that pays out 1.5% of NAV each quarter, making the trust the highest yielding in JPMorgan’s range of investment trusts, and considerably more than the yield of the benchmark. JAGI was awarded Kepler’s 2026 Income Rating.

The strong performance over multiple time periods and high yield have contributed to a narrowing of the Discount to its current level of c. 2%, versus a five-year average of 7.6%. This improved rating follows a trend seen in the peer group average, which has also narrowed considerably in the past few months, arguably reflecting a better investor outlook for Asia more generally.