Amana Growth vs SPUS 2026: Active or Index for Halal Investors (2026)

The short answer, with the numbers

Two funds dominate the “halal large-cap US core” conversation: Amana Growth Investor (AMAGX), the longest-running US Islamic equity fund, launched by Saturna Capital, and SPUS, the SP Funds S&P 500 Sharia Industry Exclusions ETF that has become the largest US halal ETF by assets. Both pass a credible Shariah screen. The decision between them is not about whether one is “more halal” — it’s about cost, tax wrapper, and what kind of portfolio you want.

For the typical investor putting money into a Roth IRA or 401(k) every month and leaving it for 20 years, SPUS is the better default. It costs 0.45% a year against AMAGX’s 0.86%, it’s an ETF (which means far fewer surprise capital-gains distributions), and over the trailing five years it simply returned more. AMAGX is the right pick only if you specifically want a human portfolio manager making active bets, plus exposure to foreign large-cap tech names that SPUS, as an S&P 500 derivative, can’t hold.

Head-to-head: the data table that settles it

Every figure below is issuer-verified as of mid-2026. Returns are net of fees; AMAGX is measured at 05/29/2026 and SPUS at 05/31/2026 (NAV).

Read straight across, SPUS wins five of the rows that matter most: fee, both return periods, yield, and tax efficiency. AMAGX wins on diversification breadth (it can hold foreign names) and on the intangible some investors want — an actual manager screening and selecting stocks rather than tracking a rules-based index.

The fee gap is bigger than it looks

A 0.45% versus 0.86% expense ratio sounds like a rounding error. It isn’t. On a $100,000 position, SPUS costs $450 a year and AMAGX costs $860 — a $410 annual difference. But the real cost is the compounding drag: that 0.41% gap, reinvested over 25 years on a portfolio growing at 8%, quietly removes roughly 8–10% of your ending balance versus the cheaper fund. On a $100,000 starting investment that’s tens of thousands of dollars that went to fees instead of to you.

AMAGX’s Institutional share class, AMIGX, narrows the gap to 0.61% — but it requires a $100,000 minimum, which prices out most investors building a position over time. For the average halal saver dollar-cost-averaging into a Roth IRA, the comparison is 0.45% versus 0.86%, full stop.

What an active manager buys you (and what it doesn’t)

AMAGX is run by a team at Saturna Capital led by a CFA charterholder, in place since 2012. That team makes deliberate choices: a roughly 53% weight to technology, top positions in Taiwan Semiconductor (7.3%) and ASML (7.2%) — the two companies that effectively own the global chip-manufacturing supply chain — alongside Apple, Alphabet, Broadcom, and NVIDIA. This is a concentrated, conviction-driven, globally-aware growth portfolio. SPUS cannot replicate it, because SPUS only holds S&P 500 constituents, and TSMC and ASML aren’t in the S&P 500.

That active tilt is a double-edged sword. It can lead in the right environment — foreign chip names ripping while the broad US index lags. But over the trailing five years it didn’t: AMAGX annualized 13.92% while SPUS’s screened-S&P slice returned about 17.39%. The lesson is the one indexing data has shown for decades — most active managers, after fees, don’t beat a low-cost index over long horizons. Amana’s team is better than most, but they were carrying a 0.41% fee handicap and a foreign-tilt bet that didn’t pay off in this particular five-year window.

What most people miss: the tax-efficiency gap

Here’s the part halal investors almost never factor in, and it can matter more than the fee. ETFs and mutual funds are taxed differently on capital gains distributions.

An ETF like SPUS uses an “in-kind redemption” mechanism — when shares are redeemed, the fund hands out appreciated stock rather than selling it, which means it rarely passes through taxable capital gains to ongoing shareholders. A mutual fund like AMAGX has to sell holdings to meet redemptions, and those realized gains get distributed to everyone still holding the fund at year-end — whether or not you sold a single share.

This is not theoretical. In December 2024, AMAGX distributed $3.14377 per share in long-term capital gains. If you held that fund in a taxable brokerage account, you owed tax on that distribution even if you didn’t touch your position. SPUS’s distributions, by contrast, are small monthly income payouts (around $0.026/share) with negligible capital-gains pass-through.

The takeaway: if you’re holding in a Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, 401(k), or HSA, the tax difference is irrelevant — choose on fee and strategy. If you’re holding in a taxable account, SPUS’s ETF structure is a real, recurring advantage that compounds alongside the fee gap.

Are they both actually halal? Running the AAOIFI screen

Yes — both clear a credible Shariah screen, but they get there differently.

• SPUS tracks the S&P 500 Sharia Industry Exclusions Index, built to AAOIFI Standard 21. That means two stages: a business-activity screen (no conventional finance, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pork, adult entertainment, weapons) and a financial-ratio screen, including a debt-to-market-cap ceiling below 30%. Roughly 200 of the S&P 500’s ~500 names survive. Its top holdings — NVIDIA (13.3%), Apple (11.5%), Microsoft (7.2%), Alphabet (5.4%) — are all screened-compliant.
• AMAGX invests only in common stocks selected in accordance with Islamic principles, holds no interest-bearing instruments, and explicitly avoids interest-based banks, insurance, alcohol, gambling, and pork processing. Its cash sits in murabaha and wakala (profit-sharing structures), not interest-bearing deposits — which is why its 30-day yield is a near-zero 0.08%.

Both also require purification: even a screened company can earn a sliver of incidental interest income, and the share of profit attributable to it should be donated to charity (not tax-deductible). SP Funds publishes a quarterly purification calculator for SPUS. Given AMAGX’s tiny yield, its purification obligation is usually negligible. This is screening mechanics applied to public data — methodology, not a fatwa.

Which one wins — for whom

There is no single “better” fund; there are two clear profiles.

1. Choose SPUS if you want the lowest-cost halal large-cap core, you’re investing in a taxable account (where its ETF tax efficiency shines), you prefer a transparent rules-based index, or you simply want the cheapest credible AAOIFI-screened S&P exposure. This describes most people building a long-term portfolio.
2. Choose AMAGX if you specifically value active management, you want foreign large-cap tech exposure (TSMC, ASML) that an S&P-derived index can’t give you, you’re investing inside a tax-sheltered account where its distribution pattern doesn’t cost you, and you’re comfortable paying 0.86% for a 38-year track record of Islamic-principles management.
3. Or hold both. A common build is SPUS as the low-cost US core (say 70–80%) plus a smaller AMAGX sleeve for active management and foreign-tech diversification — capturing the fee discipline of the index and the breadth of the active fund.

One overlap you should know about

Don’t assume these two funds give you real diversification from each other. They don’t, fully. Both are heavily concentrated in the same megacap technology names — Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Alphabet, Broadcom all appear at the top of both portfolios. SPUS runs about 13% in NVIDIA alone; AMAGX runs ~53% in tech overall. If you hold both expecting to spread your risk, understand that a tech-sector drawdown would hit them together. The genuine diversification AMAGX adds is its foreign chip exposure (TSMC, ASML) and its non-tech industrial names — not a break from megacap tech.

The decision lever

Strip away the noise and it comes down to one question: do you believe an active manager will beat a screened index by enough to overcome a 0.41% annual fee handicap? Over the last five years, the answer was no — SPUS won on cost, on tax efficiency, and on raw return. If you want to bet on Amana’s team and their foreign-tech tilt, AMAGX is a legitimate, long-tenured halal fund and it has led in other windows. But if you’re choosing a default to hold for decades, default to the cheaper, more tax-efficient index — and put the fee savings to work inside your Roth IRA.

This applies the AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard 21 screen to publicly available holdings data as of June 2026. Screening is a methodology, not a religious ruling — fund holdings change quarterly, scholars differ on gray areas, and this is not a fatwa. Verify the current screen via Musaffa or Zoya and consult a qualified scholar for your situation. Fund figures are issuer-reported (sp-funds.com, saturna.com) and are net of fees; past performance does not guarantee future results.