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Is Fidelity Puritan Fund (FPURX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now?

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If you have been looking for Mutual Fund Equity Report funds, a place to start could be Fidelity Puritan Fund (FPURX - Free Report) . FPURX bears a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 1 (Strong Buy), which is based on various forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance.

History of Fund/Manager

Fidelity is based in Boston, MA, and is the manager of FPURX. The Fidelity Puritan Fund made its debut in April of 1947 and FPURX has managed to accumulate roughly $22.05 billion in assets, as of the most recently available information. Daniel Kelley is the fund's current manager and has held that role since July of 2018.

Performance

Obviously, what investors are looking for in these funds is strong performance relative to their peers. This fund carries a 5-year annualized total return of 6.64%, and is in the top third among its category peers. But if you are looking for a shorter time frame, it is also worth looking at its 3-year annualized total return of 5.86%, which places it in the top third during this time-frame.

When looking at a fund's performance, it is also important to note the standard deviation of the returns. The lower the standard deviation, the less volatility the fund experiences. Compared to the category average of 15.8%, the standard deviation of FPURX over the past three years is 15%. Looking at the past 5 years, the fund's standard deviation is 13.28% compared to the category average of 13.77%. This makes the fund less volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.

Risk Factors

With a 5-year beta of 0.7, the fund is likely to be less volatile than the market average. Alpha is an additional metric to take into consideration, since it represents a portfolio's performance on a risk-adjusted basis relative to a benchmark, which in this case, is the S&P 500. With a negative alpha of -0.55, managers in this portfolio find it difficult to pick securities that generate better-than-benchmark returns.

Expenses

Costs are increasingly important for mutual fund investing, and particularly as competition heats up in this market. And all things being equal, a lower cost product will outperform its otherwise identical counterpart, so taking a closer look at these metrics is key for investors. In terms of fees, FPURX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.50% compared to the category average of 0.86%. So, FPURX is actually cheaper than its peers from a cost perspective.

Investors need to be aware that with this product, the minimum initial investment is $0; each subsequent investment has no minimum amount.

Bottom Line

Overall, Fidelity Puritan Fund ( FPURX ) has a high Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively strong performance, average downside risk, and lower fees, Fidelity Puritan Fund ( FPURX ) looks like a good potential choice for investors right now.

For additional information on the Mutual Fund Equity Report area of the mutual fund world, make sure to check out www.zacks.com/funds/mutual-funds. There, you can see more about the ranking process, and dive even deeper into FPURX too for additional information. For analysis of the rest of your portfolio, make sure to visit Zacks.com for our full suite of tools which will help you investigate all of your stocks and funds in one place.


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