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Is T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Income (PRSIX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now?

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If you're looking for an Allocation Balanced fund category, then a potential option is T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Income (PRSIX - Free Report) . PRSIX possesses a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 3 (Hold), which is based on nine forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance.

History of Fund/Manager

T. Rowe Price is responsible for PRSIX, and the company is based out of Baltimore, MD. T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Income debuted in July of 1994. Since then, PRSIX has accumulated assets of about $1.79 billion, according to the most recently available information. The fund's current manager, Charles M. Shriver, has been in charge of the fund since May of 2011.

Performance

Investors naturally seek funds with strong performance. This fund in particular has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 7.11%, and is in the middle third among its category peers. If you're interested in shorter time frames, do not dismiss looking at the fund's 3-year annualized total return of 6.99%, which places it in the middle 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. Over the past three years, PRSIX's standard deviation comes in at 5.06%, compared to the category average of 6.91%. Looking at the past 5 years, the fund's standard deviation is 4.99% compared to the category average of 6.73%. This makes the fund less volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.

Risk Factors

Investors cannot discount the risks to this segment though, as it is always important to remember the downside for any potential investment. In the most recent bear market, PRSIX lost 27.29% and outperformed its peer group by 8.84%. This could mean that the fund is a better choice than comparable funds during a bear market.

Nevertheless, with a 5-year beta of 0.46, the fund is likely to be less volatile than the market average. Because alpha represents a portfolio's performance on a risk-adjusted basis relative to a benchmark, which is the S&P 500 in this case, one should pay attention to this metric as well. The fund has produced a negative alpha over the past 5 years of -0.17, which shows that 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, PRSIX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.41% compared to the category average of 0.84%. From a cost perspective, PRSIX is actually cheaper than its peers.

Investors need to be aware that with this product, the minimum initial investment is $2,500; each subsequent investment needs to be at least $100.

Bottom Line

Overall, T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Income has a neutral Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively similar performance, average downside risk, and lower fees, this fund looks like a somewhat average choice for investors right now.

This could just be the start of your research on PRSIXin the Allocation Balanced category. Consider going to www.zacks.com/funds/mutual-funds for additional information about this fund, and all the others that we rank as well for additional information. If you are more of a stock investor, make sure to also check out our Zacks Rank, and our full suite of tools we have available for novice and professional investors alike.


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