Head To Head

HEAD-TO-HEAD: Fidelity and FSSA

FSA compares two Asia ex-Japan equity products: the Fidelity Asia Fund and the FSSA Asian Growth Fund.

by Thomas Blott 14 October 202217 October 2022

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Source: FE Fundinfo. Three-year cumulative returns in US dollars.

Performance

Unsurprisingly, both funds have performed poorly this year with Fidelity Asia Fund delivering a return of -16.97%, while FSSA Asia Growth Fund has delivered a return of -24.65%.

Generally speaking though, given its focus on capital preservation, FSSA Asia Growth Fund actually tends to do better in choppy markets, outperforming Fidelity Asia Fund in 2018, whereas it tends to lag Fidelity Asia Fund in growth markets.

“For Fidelity Asia, given the manager’s quality growth focus, we would expect this strategy to do well in markets when growth stocks enjoy a rally such as back in 2020 and 2019. But they underperform when value stocks outperform their growth peers such as in 2021,” said Liang.

In terms of volatility, neither of the funds are particularly volatile, although Fidelity Asia Fund tends to be slightly more so given its growth preference, Liang said.

Discrete calendar year performance

Fund/Sector	YTD*	2021	2020	2019	2018
Fidelity	-16.97%	-6.89%	23.29%	20.29%	-9.08%
FSSA	-24.65%	4.06%	18.45%	16.35%	-3.85%

Source: FE Fundinfo. Annual returns in US dollars. *1 January 2022 – 13 October 2022

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