“US Funds Return Twice Hong Kong Funds”? We Tested the Claim, Fund by Fund

Track 1 — Forensic Audit | 31 October 2026

The core proposition: one claim, two numbers, three missing details

A market alert this morning quoted a Hong Kong Economic Times comparison of MPF US equity funds, roughly as follows: US equity funds have been a popular recent member choice, the best fund’s annualised return exceeds 18%, and that is roughly double the return of Hong Kong equity funds. The claim deserves to be taken seriously — not because it is necessarily wrong, but because it discloses too little: no period, no fund names, no fee basis. The alert is a quotation, not a verification.

This article does not re-report the claim second-hand. It tests it against two primary sources: the MPFA Fund Platform’s table of all 382 constituent funds as of 30 September 2026 — where the US equity category holds exactly 20 funds, matching the count in the alert — and mpf.hk’s own fund database (303 English records, whose fact-sheet quarters are deliberately unaligned). The verdict first: the “twice” claim survives no like-for-like comparison we ran. Not because US equity funds performed poorly — on the contrary, the true gap is larger and more alarming than “twice” suggests — but because the ratio itself cannot be computed once the comparison is done properly.

The data: same window, same day, fund by fund

The MPFA Fund Platform is the only public table that puts US and Hong Kong equity funds on the same starting line: annualised return columns for one, five and ten years, all as of the same day, 30 September 2026.

A note on the sample before the tables: the platform’s category rows include multiple share classes of the same fund, so a row count is not a fund count. The averages in this section cover the 11 US equity funds and 20 Hong Kong equity funds we read in full; the tables below show the principal examples, not every fund in those averages.

US equity funds (platform category “United States Equity Fund”, 20 funds)

Across the 11 US funds we read, the one-year return averages +14.48% (median +14.58%); the five funds with a five-year record average +11.46% annualised (median +11.39%); their ten-year annualised average is +12.39%.

Hong Kong equity funds (platform category “Hong Kong Equity Fund”, including index trackers, 20-fund sample)

Across the 20 Hong Kong equity funds we read, the one-year return averages −7.33% (median −6.50%); the five-year annualised average is −0.05% (median −0.42%); the ten-year annualised average is +2.27% (median +2.71%).

Three windows, three different stories — none of them “twice”:

• One year: not twice, but opposite signs. US funds average +14.48%; Hong Kong funds average −7.33%. A positive divided by a negative is not a multiple; the gap is 21.81 percentage points.
• Five years: the multiple cannot be computed. US funds annualise at +11.46%; Hong Kong funds at −0.05% — a denominator near zero makes any multiple a parlour trick. The honest statement is a gap of 11.51 percentage points, sustained for five years.
• Ten years: not twice, but about five and a half times. US funds annualise at +12.39% against Hong Kong funds’ +2.27%, a ratio of 5.45 times. On medians (+12.37% versus +2.71%) it is 4.6 times.

So where does “twice” come from? Our own database contains exactly one comparison that produces a ratio near two — and it is the trap this article exists to expose. mpf.hk’s database carries fact-sheet quarters that are deliberately unaligned: the US funds’ “one-year return” windows run from 31 March 2026 to 31 July 2026, while the Hong Kong funds’ windows run from 31 December 2025 to 31 July 2026. Averaging those mismatched windows directly gives 10 pure US funds at +19.47% against 23 pure Hong Kong equity funds at +8.85% — a ratio of 2.20 times. “Twice” appears only when windows are misaligned; align the windows and it vanishes. This is not an accusation about any outlet’s method — the alert disclosed no method, so none can be checked — but it is a verifiable fact: the most easily available “one-year return” comparison table is itself stitched from different windows.

The “exceeds 18%” figure needs the same treatment. On the platform’s same-window data, exactly one number exceeds 18%: China Life US Equity Fund’s one-year return of +18.62% — one fund, one year, and a fund launched in December 2021 with no five- or ten-year annualised record at all. No US fund’s five- or ten-year annualised return reaches 18%; the highest is BEA North American Equity Fund’s ten-year +12.91%. Presenting one young fund’s single year as a category’s “annualised return” is the second substitution the claim requires.

The compounding cost: the gap is not a half, it is the whole engine

The most dangerous thing about “twice” is that it understates the damage. Take a lump sum of HK$250,000 and compound it at the platform’s five- and ten-year annualised averages (illustrative only, before contributions and fee differences):

• Five years: at the US average of +11.46%, HK$250,000 becomes about HK$430,000; at the Hong Kong average of −0.05%, it stays at about HK$249,000. The gap is about HK$181,000 — more than 70% of the starting balance.
• Ten years: at +12.39%, HK$250,000 becomes about HK$804,000; at +2.27%, about HK$313,000. The gap is about HK$491,000 — nearly twice the original principal.

Read the other way, members who stayed in Hong Kong equity funds did not lose “half the return”. They lost roughly 10 to 11 percentage points of compounding every year for a decade. That is the human consequence of the gap.

Fees cannot explain it — and that point matters, because it closes off a second misreading. In our platform sample, US fund expense ratios run from 0.83% (AIA American Fund) to 1.67% (AIA North American Equity Fund), with a median of about 1.06%; Hong Kong trackers charge 0.58% to 0.99%, while active Hong Kong funds charge 1.25% to 1.74%. The cheapest US fund is cheaper than most active Hong Kong funds, and the most expensive US fund still beat Hong Kong. This is a market gap, not a fee advantage. Any reading of “US funds win because they cost less” is contradicted by the first column of the tables above.

The break: three same-window checks before any switch

The flows confirm the claim’s market impact: MPF Ratings’ third-quarter 2026 data show US equity funds taking in more than HK$8.14 billion net in the quarter, while Hong Kong and China equity funds lost HK$8.04 billion net. Members are voting with their feet — which is exactly the moment the regulator worries about: the MPFA repeatedly reminds members that MPF is a 40-year-plus investment, and that chasing short-term champions carries far more risk than staying diversified. Three checks, needing no new tool, only same-window discipline:

1. Check your own fund’s five- and ten-year annualised figures, not its one year. On the MPFA Fund Platform, find your fund and read the five- and ten-year columns for the same date. A one-year champion (this year’s China Life at +18.62%) has no five-year record — that is not a fault, but it cannot evidence long-term ability.
2. Lock the date before comparing. For any “one-year return” ranking, ask first: is every fund’s as-of date the same day? Figures from different fact-sheet quarters can turn a ratio from 2 times into 5 times, or from positive into negative.
3. Price the transit cost before moving for a single number. MPF switching uses forward pricing (T+1/T+2), and a transfer sits out of the market for about one to two weeks; on HK$250,000, a ±2% move in transit is ±HK$5,000 — roughly 3.4 years of a 0.59-percentage-point fee saving. Switching repeatedly to chase a one-year number can erase a year’s gap in a single move.

One sentence concludes it: over five and ten years, US equity funds genuinely beat Hong Kong equity funds by a wide margin — about 10 to 11 percentage points a year, or about HK$491,000 on HK$250,000 over ten years. “Twice” understates the long-run gap while overstating what a single year proves. Fix the window first, and the gap comes into focus.