Investors in search of a Target Date fund might want to consider looking at Vanguard Target Retirement 2025 Fund (VTTVX Quick QuoteVTTVX - Free Report) . While this fund is not tracked by the Zacks Mutual Fund Rank, we were able to examine other factors like performance, volatility, and cost.

History of Fund/Manager

Vanguard Group is based in Malvern, PA, and is the manager of VTTVX. Since Vanguard Target Retirement 2025 Fund made its debut in October of 2003, VTTVX has garnered more than $76.73 billion in assets. The fund's current manager is a team of investment professionals.

Performance

Obviously, what investors are looking for in these funds is strong performance relative to their peers. This fund has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 7.13%, and it sits 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 13.86%, which places it in the middle third during this time-frame.

It is important to note that the product's returns may not reflect all its expenses. Any fees not reflected would lower the returns. Total returns do not reflect the fund's [%] sale charge. If sales charges were included, total returns would have been lower.

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. VTTVX's standard deviation over the past three years is 8.71% compared to the category average of 13.07%. The standard deviation of the fund over the past 5 years is 10.18% compared to the category average of 13.51%. This makes the fund less volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.

Risk Factors

With a 5-year beta of 0.61, 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. VTTVX has generated a negative alpha over the past five years of -3.75, demonstrating that managers in this portfolio find it difficult to pick securities that generate better-than-benchmark returns.

Expenses

As competition heats up in the mutual fund market, costs become increasingly important. Compared to its otherwise identical counterpart, a low-cost product will be an outperformer, all other things being equal. Thus, taking a closer look at cost-related metrics is vital for investors. In terms of fees, VTTVX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.08% compared to the category average of 0.87%. So, VTTVX is actually cheaper than its peers from a cost perspective.

Investors should also note that the minimum initial investment for the product is $1,000 and that each subsequent investment needs to be at $1.

Fees charged by investment advisors have not been taken into consideration. Returns would be less if those were included.

Bottom Line

For additional information on the Target Date 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 VTTVX too for additional information. If you want to check out our stock reports as well, make sure to go to Zacks.com to see all of the great tools we have to offer, including our time-tested Zacks Rank.