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3 Balanced Mutual Funds for Outstanding Returns

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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 Fund (MFTFX - Free Report) , Brown Advisory Flexible Equity Adv Fund (BAFAX - Free Report) and Metropolitan West AlphaTrak 500 Fund (MWATX - Free Report) . 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 a fixed-income strategy and a managed-futures strategy. 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 Fund has three-year annualized returns of 15.3%. Joseph Barrato has been one of the fund managers of MFTFX since 2014.

Brown Advisory Flexible Equity Adv Fund invests most of its net assets, along with borrowings, if any, in a diversified equity portfolio of domestic and foreign securities, which, according to its advisors, have robust and improving long-term business prospects but whose share prices are not discounted due to such favorable fundamental attributes. BAFAX advisors generally choose to invest in medium and large market capitalization companies.

Brown Advisory Flexible Equity Adv Fund has three-year annualized returns of 11%. BAFAX has an expense ratio of 0.94%.

Metropolitan West AlphaTrak 500 Fund invests most of its assets in fixed-income investments, comprising securities rated as investment grade or unrated securities. MWATX advisors maintain a portfolio duration of up to three years and a dollar-weighted average maturity of up to five years.

Metropolitan West AlphaTrak 500 Fund has three-year annualized returns of 9.4%. As of June 2023, MWATX held three issues, and 0.7% of its assets were invested in SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust.

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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