Any investors hoping to find an Allocation Balanced fund could think about starting with Franklin Corefolio Allocation A (FTCOX Quick QuoteFTCOX - Free Report) . FTCOX has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 1 (Strong Buy), which is based on nine forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance.

History of Fund/Manager

Franklin Templeton is responsible for FTCOX, and the company is based out of San Mateo, CA. The Franklin Corefolio Allocation A made its debut in August of 2003 and FTCOX has managed to accumulate roughly $599.54 million in assets, as of the most recently available information. T. Anthony Coffey is the fund's current manager and has held that role since August of 2003.

Performance

Investors naturally seek funds with strong performance. This fund has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 12.46%, and it sits 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 11.29%, 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. Over the past three years, FTCOX's standard deviation comes in at 10.67%, compared to the category average of 8.1%. The fund's standard deviation over the past 5 years is 9.89% compared to the category average of 7.9%. This makes the fund more volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.

Risk Factors

One cannot ignore the volatility of this segment, however, as it is always important for investors to remember the downside to any potential investment. In FTCOX's case, the fund lost 51.81% in the most recent bear market and underperformed its peer group by 15.68%. This makes the fund a possibly worse choice than its peers during a sliding market environment.

Even still, the fund has a 5-year beta of 0.99, so investors should note that it is hypothetically as volatile as the market at large. 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. The fund has produced a negative alpha over the past 5 years of -2.78, which shows that managers in this portfolio find it difficult to pick securities that generate better-than-benchmark returns.

Expenses

For investors, taking a closer look at cost-related metrics is key, since costs are increasingly important for mutual fund investing. Competition is heating up in this space, and a lower cost product will likely outperform its otherwise identical counterpart, all things being equal. In terms of fees, FTCOX is a load fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.43% compared to the category average of 0.84%. From a cost perspective, FTCOX is actually cheaper than its peers.

This fund requires a minimum initial investment of $1,000, while there is no minimum for each subsequent investment.

Bottom Line

Overall, Franklin Corefolio Allocation A has a high Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively strong performance, average downside risk, and lower fees, this fund looks like a good potential choice for investors right now.

For additional information on the Allocation Balanced 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 FTCOX 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.