I pride myself on being a dividend investor, which is probably the safer approach to growing wealth as opposed to picking out growth stocks. Dividends are more or less guaranteed and growth is less so. However, there are professionals who have a nose for picking out growth stocks. What’s better than a growth stock? A bunch of them. This is what a mutual fund is.

Full disclosure: I did not pick out this mutual fund to put my money in. Fidelity Investments did. They are professionals who pick out and bundle growth stocks to match their clients’ risk tolerances and growth preferences.

Initially, I held my TFSA with Fidelity Investments and they picked out four mutual funds to invest my $6,000 TFSA contribution in. Within 6 months I realized that I wanted to take control of my TFSA and bid farewell to Fidelity. But not before Fidelity helped me grow my $6,000 into a bountiful $6,411 in 6 months.

Out of the four mutual funds they deposited my money in, the highest had a growth of 14.33%, the second-highest had 9.79%, the third-highest had 7.46%, and the last had a decline of 3.66% during the period I held these funds.

The negative growth of 3.66% shows that even professionals miss targets sometimes. So, always be prepared to lose the money you invest in the stock market.

Let’s talk about the positives in this article, specifically the highest performed mutual fund, named ‘U.S. Focused Stock – Series B – ISC.’

Fidelity U.S. Focused Stock Fund – Series B Review

Fidelity introduced this mutual fund in 1990 and it benchmarks the S&P 500 Index in the USA. The S&P 500 Index contains the 500 largest companies in both NYSE and NASDAQ stock exchanges. So, these companies are as good as they come.

Since the fund is focused on the S&P 500 companies, 99% of the holdings of the fund are of US equity, with 40% of the composition in the Information Technology sector. The second-highest sector is Consumer Discretionary with 16% of the holdings.

Fidelity classifies ‘U.S. Focused Stock – Series B‘ mutual fund as a Medium risk category, which is not too bad. The fund has delivered an annualized return of 9.72% which is pretty incredible. This is not a 14.33% return that I was able to enjoy within 6 months, but I had the advantage of a slight dip in the price of this fund during COVID-19 times in Sept-Oct of 2020.

If we were to ignore the dip the fund went through from 2000 to 2011, we are left with an annualized return of over 18% in the past 7-8 years.

As per Fidelity, a $10,000 invested in this mutual fund in 1990 would be $175,685 as of August 6, 2021.

The cost of this mutual fund also known as the Management Expense Ratio or MER is 2.3% at the time of this article. This is a pretty decent rate considering the returns the fund has been able to deliver consistently over the years.

Top 10 Holdings of Fidelity U.S. Focused Stock Fund – Series B

Below are the top 10 holdings of this mutual fund as of the date of this article.

Company	Investment	Holding %
Microsoft	$103,405,963	5.13%
ALPHABET INC Class-A	$101,605,180	5.04%
Caesars Entertainment	$100,996,643	5.01%
FACEBOOK INC Class-A	$99,566,543	4.94%
PayPal	$96,741,117	4.80%
S&P Global	$96,273,370	4.78%
Wells Fargo	$93,435,908	4.64%
Nvidia	$89,241,647	4.43%
SQUARE INC Class-A	$89,024,125	4.42%
Amazon.com	$87,487,432	4.34%

All of these companies are well-reputed big companies that need no introduction.

Of course, past performance does not guarantee the same results in the future. But past data can be a good indication for forecasting.

Let us hear what are your thoughts and experiences with this mutual fund in the comments below.