On the surface, Java and JGRO look promising. Both ETFs carry the Morning Star Medal’s “Silver” medal, a name for granting funds, that is, Morning Star analysts have “high beliefs that will exceed the relevant index or that most peers will exceed the relevant index during the risk-adjusted market cycle, or that most peers.” If you believe in the judgment behind it, it is not a bad recognition. (Gold rating is the highest 15%, in the next 35% silver rating.)
JPMorgan Chase also promoted the relative historical performance of these two funds. For example, Java emphasizes its results with the Morningstar big value category average and the Russell 1000 value index. JGRO similarly claims to perform better than averages in its Morning Star companion category.
Active ETFs in the United States still struggle to surpass indexed ETFs
You can carefully select the benchmark comparison. Morningstar analyst ratings, while helpful, still have authoritative bias. This means that people may also trust too much in the opinion of experts, even if these experts may be biased or wrong.
Draw historical gains directly into more mixed pictures from the historical returns of the directly available low-cost benchmark. From October 5, 2021 to April 23, 2025, Java was underperforming, while the popular Vanguard Value ETF (VTV) recovered a CAGR of 6.93% compared to 7.59% of VTV.
On the other hand, JGRO only slightly outperforms the Pioneer Growth ETF (VUG) in its available window, returning a CAGR of 14.91% from August 9, 2022 to April 23, 2025, compared with 14.61% VUG.
This raises the question: Why pay 0.44% for Java or JGRO when VTV and VUG offer similar performance large value and growth exposure? The cost gap is huge, and when you check portfolio overlaps, it is difficult to justify it.
As of April 24, there were 99 overlapping holdings between Java and VTV. This accounts for 61.5% of Java 165 holdings and 30.4% of VTV 335 holdings. This level of overlap shows that at least the core holdings suggests that the degree of similarity between the two portfolios is meaningful.
For JGRO, the overlap is slightly lower, but it is still worth noting. It shares 58 shares with VUG, accounting for 51.8% of JGRO 114 shares and 35.8% of Vug 170. Again, this shows that despite the positive authorization, there is still important commonality between JGRO and its index tracking.
