JPMorgan Mid Cap Growth Fund Class R3 JMGPX

JPMorgan Mid Cap Growth benefits from capable leadership, solid analytical support, and a sensible, risk-aware approach. It earns a Process rating upgrade to Above Average from Average.

This strategy leverages an accomplished growth team and competent lead manager; Felise Agranoff guides this strategy and brings experience across the market-cap spectrum. She has managed this mid-cap growth strategy for more than a decade, previously comanaged the firm’s small-cap growth fund for six years, and has experience in large-cap portfolio management.

Comanager Mike Stein helps Agranoff keep a pulse on small-cap ideas. Stein has served as a comanager on JPMorgan Small Cap Growth since 2023 and will step into a lead role when its longtime lead manager steps off at the end of July 2026. Together, they benefit from the support of J.P. Morgan’s experienced small/mid-cap and large-cap growth research analyst teams.

Agranoff’s philosophy is consistent with the firm’s broader growth platform. Her team seeks companies with underappreciated growth prospects and durable competitive advantages that can drive earnings growth over the next three to five years. At the same time, the process is more benchmark-aware than those of many mid-growth peers. The managers carefully consider benchmark risk when sizing positions and incorporate near-term analysis to assess expectations embedded in stock prices, helping to mitigate some of the risks associated with a growth-oriented portfolio.

The recent environment has been challenging for active mid-cap growth managers—including Agranoff and her colleagues. Benchmark returns in 2023 and 2024 were heavily influenced by the outsize gains of Palantir Technologies and AppLovin, making it difficult for many active strategies to keep pace. While this strategy added those names to the portfolio, it still lagged the benchmark by roughly 5 percentage points annualized over that two-year period. It did fare better than some peers that completely avoided the companies, though. Performance improved in 2025, however, and continued to rebound in the first half of 2026, when the strategy outperformed the index by 2.4 percentage points, aided by strong stock selection in technology names such as Ciena and Teradyne.

Overall, this strategy’s various strengths make it a compelling option.

The managers’ sensible, risk-aware approach to investing in high-growth companies earns a Process rating upgrade to Above Average.

Consistent with J.P. Morgan’s broader growth investing framework, the team seeks companies with underappreciated growth prospects and durable competitive advantages that can support earnings growth over the next three to five years. The portfolio includes both rapidly growing companies and steadier businesses, though it has historically leaned toward the former. The managers are particularly attracted to companies whose fundamentals are inflecting positively, resulting in a portfolio that typically exhibits above-average growth and momentum characteristics.

The approach is somewhat unconventional relative to many mid-growth peers. The portfolio tends to remain more closely aligned with the benchmark than most actively managed competitors, a deliberate choice by the managers. They size positions thoughtfully relative to the index and seek to avoid missing the benchmark’s largest winners.

The team also incorporates a shorter-term perspective into its investment process, evaluating each holding’s outlook relative to market expectations. This discipline helps managers identify opportunities to realize gains when valuations become stretched and reduce exposure when a stock’s risk/reward profile deteriorates. As a result, the strategy maintains a moderate level of annual turnover, ranging from 42% to 67% over the past five calendar years through 2025.

The portfolio's construction reflects the team’s benchmark-aware approach. Holding 100 to 130 stocks, it is well diversified and generally resembles the composition of the Russell Midcap Growth Index. As is typical for a growth strategy, the largest allocations are found in technology, healthcare, and consumer discretionary stocks. As of May 2026, those sectors accounted for 52% of assets, compared with 56% for the benchmark. The strategy also maintained a meaningful allocation to industrials—roughly 25% of assets—including top holdings such as Vertiv Holdings and Howmet Aerospace.

Position sizing is relatively balanced across the portfolio. The largest holdings typically represent 2% to 3% of assets, while the average position size is closer to 1%, resulting in a fairly even distribution of stock weights.

The managers’ close attention to benchmark exposures helps keep the strategy firmly anchored in the mid-growth segment of the Morningstar Style Box. Cash levels are typically modest, generally remaining below 2% of assets.

At the stock-selection level, the managers prefer companies with stronger growth prospects. As a result, the portfolio tends to favor firms that are gaining market share, disrupting established industries, or creating new markets rather than mature businesses with entrenched profit streams. Consequently, portfolio-level profitability measures generally trail those of the benchmark, while measures of expected and trailing growth tend to run higher.

Capable leadership and strong supporting resources underpin this strategy’s Above Average People rating.

While relatively new to leading this strategy, Felise Agranoff has the expertise to stand out. She has spent her entire 22-year career at J.P. Morgan Asset Management and has helped manage strategies for about half that time. Agranoff joined this strategy as a comanager in 2016 under her longtime mentor and assumed leadership following his retirement in 2024. Her background also includes a six-year stint comanaging JPMorgan Small Cap Growth as well as responsibilities in large-cap portfolio management.

Comanager Mike Stein plays a key role in keeping a pulse on small-cap ideas. He has served as a comanager on JPMorgan Small Cap Growth since 2023 and is slated to assume a lead role when that strategy’s longtime manager steps down in July 2026. Stein has nearly 20 years of industry experience, including 12 years with J.P. Morgan.

The managers are supported by an experienced seven-member small/mid-cap growth analyst team who average 13 years of industry experience. While the team has experienced some turnover—including former comanager and analyst Daniel Bloomgarden, who transitioned to another investment team within the firm in 2025—it continues to maintain dedicated coverage across the key segments of the mid-growth universe. The firm’s willingness to move on from underperforming analysts, coupled with its ability to attract and develop strong talent, remains a positive driver of team evolution and improvement. The team also benefits from collaboration with J.P. Morgan’s large-cap growth team and broader centralized research platform.

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.

This strategy has posted decent results under Felise Agranoff. Using the institutional share class from Agranoff's January 2016 start as a comanager, the mutual fund's 12.6% annualized return through June 2026 beat its average mid-growth Morningstar Category peer by nearly 1 percentage point and modestly surpassed the Russell Midcap Growth Index.

The fund's momentum bias helped produce particularly strong performance from 2017 through 2020 as the market rewarded high-multiple stocks with lofty expectations for future growth. Top picks over this period include electric automaker Tesla, software company Veeva Systems, and generator company Generac Holdings. However, what differentiated this fund is that it captured much of the bull market's upside but avoided some of the downside associated with higher momentum strategies. During market pullbacks, the fund generally held up decently, typically declining slightly less than the benchmark.

More recently, the environment has been challenging for active managers in the mid-growth category. The benchmark’s gains of 26% in 2023 and 22% in 2024 outpaced many active funds, driven in large part by the extraordinary performance of Palantir Technologies and AppLovin. As a result, the fund trailed the index by roughly 5 percentage points annualized over those two years, yet it fared better than some peers that completely avoided the companies. Relative performance improved in 2025, when the fund narrowly outperformed the benchmark. That recovery continued in the first half of 2026, as the strategy bested the index by 3.7 percentage points, aided by strong stock selection in technology names such as Ciena and Teradyne.

JPMorgan Mid Cap Growth R3's Prospectus Adjusted Expense Ratio is 1.15% per year. It places it in the second-most-expensive quintile of the Morningstar US Fund Mid-Cap Growth Category, where the median fee is 0.95% per year. This cost positioning translates into a Medalist Rating Price Score of -0.9, 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.