Key Morningstar Metrics for Fund Name
- Morningstar Medalist Rating: Silver
- Process Pillar: Above Average
- People Pillar: Above Average
- Parent Pillar: Above Average
Fidelity Blue Chip Growth’s excellent leadership and skillful execution continue to be advantages, but the fund is vulnerable if current enthusiasm for artificial intelligence wanes or geopolitical tensions flare.
A consistent overweighting in semiconductors has helped earn the fund one of the large-growth Morningstar Category’s best results over the past decade. A USD 10,000 investment in its no-load share class on Feb. 1, 2015, would have grown to more than USD 43,500 by March 31, 2025, and around USD 40,000 in a fund tracking the Russell 1000 Growth Index (the category’s benchmark). Few other funds managed to beat the index over that span. The portfolio’s semiconductors stake, which is dominated by sizable overweightings in Nvidia NVDA and Marvell Technology MRVL, recently amounted to 20% of assets—much more than the index’s 15% and average peer’s 13%.
Nvidia and Marvell are riskier than most. Although both enjoy sound balance sheets, a slip in spending on AI infrastructure could send their shares plummeting. Their businesses have historically been prone to boom-and-bust cycles that have rocked their share prices. And supply chain disruptions—whether stemming from trade tensions, export controls, or geopolitical conflicts—are other shared risks. Indeed, they accounted for a large share of the fund’s steep losses in 2025’s first three months as Nvidia slid nearly 20% and Marvell plunged by more than 40%.
But this fund has never been tame under manager Sonu Kalra. He builds a portfolio of 200-plus stocks that embraces companies with higher-than-average expected growth rates, at times paltry earnings relative to their share prices, and significant price fluctuations. These features position the fund to thrive when investors’ risk appetites grow, but they also set the stage for its underperformance when markets stumble or when value stocks—those with low price multiples and growth rates or high dividend yields—are in favor. It is an investment style that resembles other well-run Fidelity funds.
Across all vehicles, the fund’s present size poses challenges. Its asset base of over USD 100 billion, one of the world’s largest actively managed large-growth funds, makes it difficult to invest meaningfully in the smaller-cap prospects that have driven much of the fund’s past success. Still, that doesn’t necessarily relegate the fund to mediocrity. Kalra’s moves tend to be gradual, and analytical support from Fidelity’s deep analyst bench helps keep track of the fund’s sprawling portfolio.
Fidelity Blue Chip Growth: Performance Highlights
The fund has posted phenomenal, albeit volatile, results under manager Kalra.
From his July 2009 start through March 2025, the 17.8% annualized gain of the mutual fund’s no-load share class beat the Russell 1000 Growth Index by 1.4 percentage points and outpaced nearly all large-growth category peers, which averaged 13.6% annualized. The fund’s excess returns have also been mostly consistent: Over the 154 monthly rolling three-year periods on Kalra’s watch, the fund outperformed the index two thirds of the time and nearly always landed in the category’s top third. But the fund’s above-average volatility, as measured by standard deviation, dulled its risk-adjusted results. Kalra’s tenure has coincided with a mostly rising market led by stocks with relatively high price multiples and rapid growth expectations, which has supplied stylistic tailwinds to the fund’s returns over the long haul.
The fund’s style partly explains its dismal results in 2022 as inflation and interest rates soared and high-growth stocks fared especially poorly. Such underperformance is typical for this fund, which has seldom offered downside protection or outperformance when value stocks have been in favor. It has instead excelled during market rallies where risk-taking on companies with high price multiples, highly uncertain futures, or cyclicality is handsomely rewarded.
The fund’s huge allocation to semiconductors was a big help in 2023 and 2024 as real enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence powered the industry’s tremendous gains. Overweightings in Meta and Netflix NFLX and strong stock-picking within healthcare also contributed to those years’ outstanding results for the fund.