JPMorgan Active Value ETF JAVA

JPMorgan Active Value ETF receives Above Average People and Process ratings, driven by a sound combination of two underlying strategies with those same scores.

J.P. Morgan's approach here is simple and reasonable. Half of this active exchange-traded fund's assets go to the opportunistic style of JPMorgan Large Cap Value, and the other half to the more sedate approach of JPMorgan US Value, both of which dwell in the large-value Morningstar Category. The idea is that the combination of the more bold Large Cap Value and the more defensive US Value will largely track the Russell 1000 Value benchmark, while outperforming via good stock picks from two distinct perspectives.

This ETF benefits from two solid management teams. JPMorgan Large Cap Value’s very successful lead portfolio manager since 2013 is Scott Blasdell, who has been a named manager on the ETF since its October 2021 inception. John Piccard joined him as a named manager at Large Cap Value in late 2023 and here in November 2024. On the US Value side, Dave Silberman and Andy Brandon have been named managers with good records since 2019 and lead managers since the retirement of Clare Hart in the fall of 2024; they’ve been named managers here since inception. The portfolio managers of both strategies have a small group of dedicated analysts and also lean heavily on J.P. Morgan’s 20-person crew of highly experienced core equity analysts.

This ETF combines two distinctive approaches to create a nicely balanced value portfolio. The north star of JPMorgan Large Cap Value is price. Specifically, Blasdell and team compare a company’s stock price against its expected long-term cash flows; about 70-110 stocks make the cut. For JPMorgan US Value, quality is the guiding light. Silberman and Brandon think a portfolio of between 85 and 110 consistent earners with solid capital allocation should beat the market if bought at reasonable levels. Combined, the portfolio has held between 149 and 180 stocks since inception; that means there’s limited portfolio overlap, which testifies to two distinct approaches in the same universe.

In its first four years through Oct. 5, 2025, this ETF returned 10.5% annualized, topping the Russell 1000 Value Index's 9.1%. That return falls in between those of its two underlying strategies but is a bit better than the midpoint, suggesting the blending over time boosted returns somewhat.

Fusing two strong large-value approaches drives an Above Average Process rating.

J.P. Morgan combines its two underlying strategies in the most simple, direct way. ETF assets go to individual stocks based on the average of the positions in the two strategies and twice-monthly rebalancing trues up the weightings.

The underlying JPMorgan US Value strategy starts with business quality. It constantly scours the large-value area for companies with consistent earnings, high returns on invested capital, sound financials, and evidence of capital discipline. After identifying target stocks on those traits, the team looks for those that are cheap given their intrinsic values. The team uses different metrics to assess intrinsic value for various industries, generally starting with free cash flow yield, price ratios, and enterprise-value multiples.

The JPMorgan Large Cap Value strategy emphasizes valuation, assessing bargains by comparing stock prices with long-term cash flows. The team uses six-year estimates of normalized cash flows to rank Russell 1000 Value Index constituents, within sectors, from least to most pricey. Stocks in the two cheapest quintiles receive further investigation. The team aims for solid firms that the market has overly punished because of short-term issues. The managers examine a stock's industry to avoid those in long-term decline, seek companies with improving fundamentals, and vet management's capital allocation decisions.

The ETF is supposed to track the Russell 1000 Value Index closely but top it via stock selection. From its inception in October 2021 through June 2025, the ETF’s beta, or market sensitivity, to the Russell 1000 Value was 0.96 (close to the bullseye of 1.00). That makes sense because just 18 of the ETF’s 157 holdings in June came from outside the benchmark, and they held just 10.4% of assets. Almost 90% of the ETF’s assets went to constituents of the Russell 1000 Value Index, but the weightings were meaningfully different. The ETF had just a 61% active share (which measures the similarity between the index’s and portfolio’s stock weightings). Both teams significantly overweight favorite holdings, so the ETF’s three top stocks—Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Philip Morris International—held 8.8% of assets but made up just 3.0% of the index.

While portfolio manager Scott Blasdell makes modest intentional sector tilts against the market with his portfolio, portfolio managers Andy Brandon and Dave Silberman are more restrained. Overall, the sector differentiation from the benchmark is small. As of June 2025, the largest sector overweighting versus the benchmark was 2.8 percentage points in industrials; the biggest underweighting was in communication services by 3.0 percentage points. In communications, both sleeves of the portfolio held Alphabet and Meta, driving a collective 3% stake in them—a majority of the 5% total stake in the area.

Two strong teams combine here to earn an Above Average People rating.

Comanagers Andrew Brandon and David Silberman have led the JPMorgan US Value team since the 2024 retirement of former leader Clare Hart. Brandon came to the firm in 2000, joined this team in 2012, and became its comanager in 2019. Silberman joined the firm in 1989 and joined this team as a comanager in November 2019. Dedicated analysts Tony Lee and Lerone Vincent joined the team in 2018 and 2022, respectively. In January 2024, Laura Huang joined from the firm’s central analyst team to cover financials—Hart’s area of expertise.

Lead manager Scott Blasdell heads up the JPMorgan Large Cap Value team. Before coming to the firm in 1999, he worked on John Neff’s highly successful team at Wellington Management. At J.P. Morgan, he started as a REIT analyst and ran REIT portfolios from 2001 to 2008. He then began managing diversified value portfolios like JPMorgan Large Cap Value, which he's led since 2013. John Piccard, a comanager on the underlying strategy since late 2023, became a listed manager on this ETF on Nov. 1, 2024. Also dedicated here are analysts Jim Brown and Amod Gautam, covering stocks in the mid-cap portion of the Russell 1000 Value Index.

Both teams depend upon J.P. Morgan’s potent crew of 20 analysts, who average 23 years of industry experience and 13 years’ experience at the firm. J.P. Morgan’s first-rate capital markets team handles the intricacies of ETF construction and trading.

J.P. Morgan continues to build a track record of strong stewardship, supporting a Parent rating upgrade to High from Above Average.

With more than USD 4 trillion in assets under management (including USD 1.3 trillion in money market funds) and a broad reach, J.P. Morgan is among the largest active asset managers in the US, Europe, and Asia. Although some multi-asset offerings have struggled over the past five years, prompting new leadership to make changes to investment teams, its equity and fixed-income teams boast long-tenured portfolio managers who practice repeatable investment processes that have generally produced strong long-term results. Most of its funds are core building blocks with long lifetimes, though its lineup around the world also includes more-specialized options: Two options-based equity-income exchange-traded funds, launched in 2020 and 2022, are now among the firm’s largest. J.P. Morgan has been an early mover in offering active ETFs, having converted 12 of its open-end mutual funds to the structure and launching others. It isn’t always at the forefront of emerging trends. While it has filed registration statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an interval fund and an ETF investing in private markets, it hasn’t yet introduced such an option for all investors, whether on its own or in partnership with another asset manager, unlike some of its closest competitors.

To support the firm’s diverse investment offerings, J.P. Morgan has invested heavily in both portfolio management tools and its client organization. Over the past 10 years, the firm has developed robust proprietary technology with advanced analytics and broad buy-in from investment analysts, portfolio traders, and portfolio managers, all of whom have easy access to the platform. The firm also stands apart for its demonstrated commitment to clients. In the early 2000s, J.P. Morgan began pivoting its engagement with financial advisors to adopt a more consultative approach, supported by its sought-after Guide to the Markets research series that focuses on investor education, not product pitches. This perspective can help clients stay the course, supporting positive investor outcomes.

Incentives reinforce alignment with fundholders. Beginning more than 10 years ago, investment team compensation is tied to three-, five-, and 10-year performance, and portfolio managers must invest at least half of their deferred compensation in J.P. Morgan strategies. Many firms encourage portfolio managers to invest alongside fundholders, but J.P. Morgan goes a step further in requiring client-facing individuals to invest substantial portions of their incentive compensation in the funds.

Although some funds still face high cost hurdles, more than half of share classes charge competitive fees relative to peers.

To date, results have been good.

From Oct. 5, 2021, to Oct. 5, 2025, this ETF returned 10.5% annualized, topping the Russell 1000 Value Index’s 9.1% mark. That’s between the institutional share classes of JPMorgan Large Cap Value’s 10.7% and JPMorgan US Value’s 9.5%, but much better than an average of the underlying strategies. Among active large-value mutual funds and ETFs, this ETF ranks 90th out of 280 members of the large-value category over that period.

One benefit of the half-and-half structure here is decent resilience during downturns. Scott Blasdell often buys aggressively when prices plummet, so Large Cap Value often lags in downturns. On the other hand, the more quality-oriented US Value approach that Andrew Brandon and Dave Silberman pursue often holds up well. So, in the steep but brief correction from Feb. 20 to April 8, 2025, the Large Cap Value fund sharply fell 16.1%, but the US Value fund slid just 13.7%. That meant this ETF fell 14.8%, nearly in line with the Russell 1000 Value’s 14.6% drop. It’s worth noting that both substrategies did quite well in the 2022 downturn—so this ETF outperformed the benchmark by 6 percentage points.

The ETF had a mildly subpar first nine months of 2025. According to attribution analysis, one key driver of underperformance was its lack of exposure to parent company JPMorgan Chase (which it cannot own). Otherwise, the most obvious detractor was an overweighting in troubled UnitedHealth Group, which both teams owned in their sleeves.

JPMorgan Active Value ETF's Prospectus Adjusted Expense Ratio is 0.44% per year. It places it in the cheapest quintile of the Morningstar US Fund Large Value Category, where the median fee is 0.75% per year. This cost positioning translates into a Medalist Rating Price Score of 1.73, which reflects its relative price positioning within the category. The Price Score ranges from -2.50 (most expensive) to +2.50 (cheapest), with higher scores indicating better cost competitiveness.