American Funds Fundamental Investors® Class A
The strategy’s flexibility, breadth, and structure earn it an Above Average Process rating.
The strategy’s flexibility helps it stand out. It has historically made the strategy one of the firm’s more aggressive large-blend offerings, a characteristic reflected in its differentiated sector and geographic positioning. Unlike other firm large-blend strategies, it is not required to maintain a yield above that of the prospectus S&P 500 benchmark. Instead, management targets a preexpense portfolio yield of roughly 80% to 100% of the index, providing the flexibility to invest across a wide spectrum of opportunities, from high-growth companies and deep-value ideas to more stable dividend-paying stocks.
The strategy can also invest up to 35% of its assets abroad. The managers usually buy globally dominant companies that have few domestic equivalents. This tends to be the case in materials and natural-resources stocks, for example. They also often invest in international companies that have higher yields than their US counterparts.
Capital Group’s multimanager approach lets the managers play to their strengths. With distinct styles, they can invest in their best ideas or hold cash to wait for compelling opportunities. Meanwhile, the combination of separately managed sleeves mutes the overall portfolio’s volatility. The firm typically prefers that managers hold investments for the long term and incentivizes them appropriately, giving them the conviction to hold promising stocks that may take several years to work out.
The strategy’s flexibility results in a portfolio that looks meaningfully different from the typical large-blend category peer. Managers typically allocate more than 10% of assets to non-US stocks, and as of September 2026, the portfolio’s 19% foreign allocation ranked among the category’s top 5%. Notable foreign holdings included semiconductor leader TSMC, British American Tobacco, and South Korean memory chip manufacturer SK Hynix.
While the portfolio’s sector positioning relative to the S&P 500 is less extreme than in prior years, it still reflects the team’s highest-conviction views. As of September 2026, technology represented 35% of assets, roughly 5 percentage points below the benchmark. However, the managers maintained a significant preference for semiconductor stocks, overweighting the industry by approximately 4 percentage points. Five of the portfolio’s top 10 holdings were semiconductor companies, led by top holding Broadcom. Industrials represented the strategy’s largest sector overweighting at roughly 4 percentage points, while consumer staples was also modestly overweight, with tobacco companies contributing meaningfully to the allocation.
The resulting portfolio was broadly diversified, holding approximately 225 stocks. It has typically been less concentrated in its top 10 positions than the index and has maintained a modest growth tilt. Although the strategy has held meaningful cash balances at times, its cash allocation stood below 3% as of September 2026.