Balanced funds offer investors the convenience of buying into a single fund rather than holding both equity and bond funds. This category of funds also reduces a portfolio’s volatility while providing higher returns than pure fixed-income investments.
The fund managers also enjoy the flexibility of changing the proportion of equity and fixed-income investments in response to market conditions. An upswing may prompt them to hold a relatively higher share of equity to maximize gains, whereas a downturn will see them shifting loyalties toward fixed-income investments to stem losses.
Below, we share with you three top-ranked balanced mutual funds, viz., Arrow Managed Futures Strategy MFTFX, Permanent Portfolio Permanent PRPFX and Meeder Muirfield Retail FLMFX. Each has earned a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and is expected to outperform its peers in the future. Investors can click here to see the complete list of funds.
Arrow Managed Futures Strategy fund seeks to implement fixed-income and managed-futures strategies. Using its fixed-income strategy, it invests part of its net assets in U.S. government securities, fixed-income securities, money-market instruments, overnight and fixed-term repurchase agreements, cash and other cash equivalents with maturities of one year or less. MFTFX also invests a portion of its net assets in a wholly owned and controlled subsidiary to seek returns through its managed futures strategy.
Arrow Managed Futures Strategy has three-year annualized returns of 15.5%. Joseph Barrato has been one of the fund managers of MFTFX since 2014.
Permanent Portfolio Permanent fund seeks to preserve and increase the purchasing power value of its shares over the long term. PRPFX invests a fixed Target Percentage of its net assets in gold, silver, Swiss franc assets, stocks of U.S. and foreign real estate and natural resource companies, aggressive growth stocks and dollar assets such as U.S. Treasury bills and bonds.
Permanent Portfolio Permanent has three-year annualized returns of 11%. PRPFX has an expense ratio of 0.81% compared with the category average of 0.91%.
Meeder Muirfield Retail fund seeks growth of capital. FLMFX invests most of its assets in mutual funds that are primarily growth funds investing in common stocks.
Meeder Muirfield Retail has three-year annualized returns of 7.9%. As of June 2024, FLMFX held 149 issues, with 7.2% of its assets invested in Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
To view the Zacks Rank and the past performance of all balanced mutual funds, investors can click here to see the complete list of balanced mutual funds.
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