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HEAD-TO-HEAD: Alliance Bernstein vs Columbia Threadneedle

FSA compares the AB American Growth Portfolio and the Threadneedle (Lux) American Fund.

by Francis Nikolai Acosta 5 October 201810 November 2020

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Introduction

US stocks have become one of the best-performing asset classes in the equities space.

Year-to-date, the S&P 500 has returned 10.31%, beating the MSCI AC World Index (3.08%) and the MSCI Emerging Market Index (-10.70%), according to data from FE Analytics.

This outperformance could be attributed to different factors, according to Luke Ng, senior vice president at FE Advisory Asia. “Emerging markets have suffered and one of the reasons is the US has been raising interest rates because of strong economic growth.”

The strengthening of the US dollar as well as trade tensions with other economies have also caused most markets globally to underperform.

“There is uncertainty in the equity markets [overall], but the US has been doing well this year on the back of sustained better earnings compared with the rest of the world,” Ng added.

Firms such as BMO Global Asset Management, Bank J Safra Sarasin, and Blackrock, have also cited the good performance in US equities, driven by strong economic growth, tax cuts and the technology sector.

Against this backdrop, FSA asked FE’s Ng to look at two US equity funds: the Alliance Bernstein (AB) Growth Portfolio and the Threadneedle (Lux) American Fund.

	AB Fund	Threadneedle Fund
Size	$3.02bn	$285.7m
Inception	1993	1997
Manager	Frank Caruso	Nadia Grant
Cumulative return*	53.12%	53.31%
Alpha YTD**	6.29	2.01
Volatility YTD**	14.42	15.03
FE Crown fund rating	****	***
OCF	1.80%	1.80%

Source: FE, fund factsheets

*Trailing three years to 4 October

**Year-to-date to 4 October

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