AGEM vs JEMA

AGEMCabrdn Emerging Markets Dividend Active ETF

JEMAAJPMorgan ActiveBuilders Emerging Markets Equity ETF

In short

AGEM A 1990s-vintage emerging markets dividend strategy that traded its mutual fund shell for an ETF in February 2025. Same hunt as always: EM companies paying income today that may keep raising it, now priced intraday.

JEMA Active emerging-markets management priced like an index fund: J.P. Morgan blends its own country, region and style EM strategies into one roughly 500-stock portfolio built to keep the MSCI EM index's sector and country risk shape.

Stated mandate

AGEM The Fund seeks total return through income and long-term capital appreciation.

JEMA Seeks long-term capital appreciation through a portfolio of emerging-market equities.

Why people hold it

• AGEM 0.70% net of a waiver through February 28, 2027, against a 1.18% gross fee. That sits near the category median among 27 active EM equity funds.
• The 80% dividend mandate is written into the prospectus, not implied: at least 80% of net assets in EM companies that pay dividend income, filtered by a quality assessment.aberdeeninvestments.com
• Roughly 90 names rather than index-wide sprawl, with distributions paid quarterly.aberdeeninvestments.com
• The strategy predates the wrapper. It ran as the abrdn Emerging Markets Dividend Fund, with share class history going back to the 1990s, before the ETF conversion on February 18, 2025.aberdeeninvestments.com

• JEMA 0.33% a year, about half the 0.65% median for active EM funds and level with the cheapest names in the group (AVEM, AVXC, AVSE).
• Not one manager's hunch: the portfolio stitches together a range of J.P. Morgan's actively managed EM strategies across countries, regions and styles.sec.gov
• Active tilts, benchmark shape. It overweights and underweights countries and sectors versus the MSCI EM index while aiming to hold similar sector and geographic risk.sec.gov
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that stands among the strongest implementations in the active EM group on cost and structure.

Worth knowing

• AGEM The systematic crowd is cheaper: AVEM charges 0.33% and DFEM 0.39%, both unwaived. Human stock picking for dividends is the thing you are paying extra for.
• Gross fee is 1.18%. What you pay past February 28, 2027 depends on Aberdeen extending the waiver.
• Thinly traded next to the giant EM funds, which can mean wider spreads, and its record inside the ETF wrapper only starts in 2025.aberdeeninvestments.com

• JEMA Active means results ride on the adviser's calls, and the fund has only been trading since 2021, a short record for an EM strategy.sec.gov
• Full-market EM exposure runs hot: volatility screens as the softer part of the picture next to peers, the trade-off for staying in the whole asset class.
• Moderately traded rather than a tape giant, and cash comes back once or twice a year, not monthly.

Full AGEM profile⁠

Full JEMA profile⁠