Investors interested in maintaining exposure to both equity and fixed-income securities may consider betting on balanced mutual funds. Also, these mutual funds are believed to provide greater returns than pure, fixed-income investments while maintaining a low volatility level.
The proportion of equity and fixed-income investments in these funds may also vary in response to market conditions. While managers may raise the share of fixed-income securities during a downturn to avoid losses, the share of equity securities may be increased in a bullish market. Hence, these funds are expected to harness the inherent strengths of both classes of investments.
Below, we share with you three top-ranked balanced mutual funds, namely Fidelity Balanced Fund FBALX, George Putnam Balanced Fund PGEOX and Schwab MarketTrack All Equity SWEGX. 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.
Fidelity Balanced Fund aims for income and capital growth that is on par with reasonable risk by investing the majority of its assets in stocks and other equity securities and the rest in bonds and other debt securities.
Fidelity Balanced Fund has three-year annualized returns of 5.7%. FBALX has an expense ratio of 0.48%.
George Putnam Balanced Fund invests primarily in a combination of bonds and common stocks (growth or value stocks or both) of large U.S. companies. Advisors seek to purchase stocks of companies with prices that reflect a value lower than their expectations.
George Putnam Balanced Fund has three-year annualized returns of 6.7%. As of January 2025, PGEOX held 132 issues, with 13.8% of its assets invested in TOTAL CORPORATE BONDS.
Schwab MarketTrack All Equity maintains a defined asset allocation in stock investments, with certain percentages for different segments of the stock market. SWEGX invests the majority of its net assets in stock investments.
Schwab MarketTrack All Equity has three-year annualized returns of 6.4%. Zifan Tang has been one of the fund managers of SWEGX since 2012.
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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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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