After the last post — the one on getting started with halal funds — a reader wrote in with a good question: where does AMAGX fit? It's a fair thing to ask. The Amana Growth Fund (AMAGX), run by Saturna Capital, has been around since 1994 — decades before the halal ETFs existed. For a lot of Muslim investors it was the only option for years, and it still carries a loyal following and a reputation for careful, quality-focused stock picking.
So the natural instinct is that the veteran should have an edge. Let's check that instinct against the numbers. I lined AMAGX up against four of the popular halal ETFs over the same window. (One note up front: I had to leave HLAL out of this particular comparison, because the tool I pulled the data from only compares five tickers at a time. AMAGX, SPUS, SPWO, UMMA, and SPTE it is.)
Growth of $1,000
Every line starts at the same $1,000 in March 2024 — roughly what a new investor might actually begin with. Toggle any fund on or off. The first thing to notice is that AMAGX is very much in the pack — but it's nearer the back of it than the front.
Here's the mild surprise. Over these two-plus years, AMAGX finished last of the five — turning $1,000 into about $1,418, a +42% gain. Respectable in absolute terms, and it beat leaving the money in cash by a mile. But the plain halal S&P 500 fund, SPUS, turned the same $1,000 into roughly $1,569 — a +57% gain — while doing so with essentially the same month-to-month bumpiness. The global funds (SPWO, UMMA) landed higher still, and the tech fund (SPTE) doubled.
The volatility column is worth a pause. A common defense of an actively managed veteran like AMAGX is that it may give up some upside in exchange for a smoother ride. That didn't really show up here: AMAGX's annualized volatility (about 16%) sits right alongside SPUS's, and its worst month was comparable. So over this window it didn't buy meaningfully more calm, and it gave up meaningful return to a cheaper, simpler fund.
Does it at least diversify?
The other reason you might hold a fifth fund is diversification — if AMAGX moved differently from the ETFs, it could earn a spot even while trailing on return. So I checked how tightly its month-to-month moves track the others.
The answer: not much. AMAGX and SPUS correlate at 0.94 — about as close to the same bet as two different funds get. That makes sense once you say it out loud: both are large-cap U.S. equity funds screened on similar principles, so they own overlapping rosters of big American companies. AMAGX also tracks the tech fund SPTE closely (0.92). It's least correlated with the two global funds (0.78–0.80), simply because those hold more non-U.S. stocks.
Three fair caveats
Before anyone reads this as "AMAGX is bad," three things genuinely matter here. First, the window is short and specific. Twenty-seven months is not a verdict on a fund with a thirty-year record. AMAGX is a value-leaning, actively managed fund, and value styles have long stretches of trailing followed by stretches of leading. A different two years could easily flip this ranking.
Second, costs compound. AMAGX is a mutual fund with an expense ratio of 0.86%, versus roughly 0.45%–0.65% for the ETFs. That gap alone explains part of the shortfall, and it widens over decades — which cuts against AMAGX the longer you hold.
Third, screening strictness differs. Fund families don't apply identical rules, and AMAGX's long-tenured, scholar-reviewed process is part of why some investors prefer it, independent of performance. If that stricter or more established screening gives you confidence, that's a legitimate reason to hold it that a return chart can't capture.
But if your question was the reader's original one — does the old guard still win? — then over these two years, on the numbers alone, the honest answer is: no, and it mostly duplicates a fund you'd probably own anyway.