Alger Spectra Fund performance over the past two years has placed the $4.5 billion vehicle in the top 4% of its category in 2023 and the top 2% in 2024, a run that traces back, in the most direct way, to a chance meeting in a Midtown hotel on the morning of 11 September 2001.
Daniel Chung, the 64-year-old chief executive and chief investment officer of Fred Alger Management, had gone to the InterContinental Hotel that morning to hear a company executive present. He was running late and went straight from there. When a note was passed to the presenter mid-sentence, Chung was in the room to hear the words: ‘I’m not sure we can continue. There’s been a plane or something at the World Trade Center.’
Alger’s offices were on the 93rd floor of One World Trade Center, the North Tower, struck at 8:46 a.m. The attack killed 35 of Chung’s colleagues, including then-chief executive David Alger.
Chung spent the rest of that day moving between St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village and Bellevue with photos of co-workers. ‘By midday or later, you had thousands and thousands of people outside these hospitals, putting up signs and waiting, just waiting,’ he said. ‘I remember, by evening, you’re hoping to see one ambulance. I don’t actually recall seeing any that day.’
Rebuilding the Firm Without Abandoning Its Culture
Named chief investment officer in the immediate aftermath, Chung was the most senior survivor. Founder Fred Alger, Chung’s father-in-law, came out of retirement to task him with restoring the firm. Many consultants urged the Harvard Law graduate and former Supreme Court clerk to poach star portfolio managers. He rejected that advice.
Instead, Chung called back alumni who had trained at Alger and absorbed its philosophy. Teresa McRoberts, who covered healthcare, returned. David Hyun left Oppenheimer Funds. Small-cap portfolio manager Jill Greenwald approached Chung at a memorial service: ‘I heard you’re asking Alger alumni to return,’ she said. ‘When do I start?’
Preparations made by chief technology officer Michael Howell, who died on 11 September, proved critical. Howell had ensured a backup recovery centre in Morristown, New Jersey, could replicate Alger’s full trading desk, down to the seating order for portfolio managers. Alger resumed operations on 13 September. ‘It was above gold standard,’ Chung said. ‘Platinum standard.’
Per an SEC EDGAR prospectus filing, Chung, who holds the CFA designation, has served as portfolio manager of the fund since January 2011.
Alger Spectra Fund Performance and the AI Conviction Trade
The rebuilt firm has since grown to more than $47 billion in assets. SPECX posted annual total returns of 41.34% in 2023 and 47.59% in 2024, according to Yahoo Finance performance data, and ranks in the top quartile of its category on three-, five- and 10-year bases per Morningstar. The fund carries a five-year beta of 1.52 and an annual expense ratio of 1.53%, per Yahoo Finance.
That concentration of risk is visible in the portfolio’s structure. As of 30 June 2026, the top 10 holdings represented 61.76% of total portfolio assets, against a category average of 52.96%. Nvidia’s position stood at 14% of assets as of June, per Morningstar’s data at that date; the live Morningstar quote page has since moved that weighting to 15.44%, reflecting the stock’s continued rise.
Chung is unapologetic about the concentration. He argues that concern about a future oversupply of data centres misses the present shortage of computing power. ‘We are still in the early years of what will be probably almost a full decade’ of AI-driven growth, he said. ‘This feels more like 1995, I think, than, say, 1999.’
Beyond Nvidia, Chung’s conviction bets include CrowdStrike, Western Digital, Micron, and Nebius Group, a neocloud company that has nearly tripled this year. Fred Alger Management held 5.73 million shares of Nebius as of 30 June 2026, per Yahoo Finance major holders data. In November 2025, Nebius announced a $3 billion, five-year agreement to deliver AI infrastructure to Meta, per the Nebius newsroom.
Alger’s total ETF assets have now surpassed $600 million, per a press release on the Alger newsroom. The centrepiece of that range is the Alger 35 ETF (ticker: ATFV), listed on NYSE Arca. Named for the 35 colleagues lost on 9/11, the fund holds the firm’s highest-conviction ideas, with a portion of management fees donated to charities in memory of David Alger and those who died. Per the fund’s official factsheet, Fred Alger Management has contractually agreed to cap other expenses at 0.10% of average daily net assets through 31 December 2027.
Chung draws a direct line between surviving 9/11 and the optimism that shapes his investment outlook. ‘Look at how well New York has done. Look at how well America has done, actually. And look at how well Alger recovered,’ he said. For a portfolio manager running a fund with a beta of 1.52 and Nvidia as its anchor position, that confidence is not merely philosophical. It is, at this point, the thesis.
The next test arrives with Nvidia’s next earnings report, which will either justify Chung’s ‘still early’ conviction or give the naysayers their first real opening.
