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Is T. Rowe Price Health Sciences (PRHSX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now?
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If you've been stuck searching for Sector - Health funds, consider T. Rowe Price Health Sciences (PRHSX - Free Report) as a possibility. PRHSX has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 2 (Buy), which is based on nine forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance.
Objective
We note that PRHSX is a Sector - Health fund, and this area is also loaded with various options. Sector - Health mutual funds give investors an opportunity to focus on one of the largest sectors of the American economy, healthcare. Funds in this category can include everything from for-profit hospitals to pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers.
History of Fund/Manager
T. Rowe Price is based in Baltimore, MD, and is the manager of PRHSX. T. Rowe Price Health Sciences debuted in December of 1995. Since then, PRHSX has accumulated assets of about $11.28 billion, according to the most recently available information. The fund is currently managed by Ziad Bakri who has been in charge of the fund since April of 2016.
Performance
Investors naturally seek funds with strong performance. This fund has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 18.52%, and it sits in the top 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 5.11%, 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, PRHSX's standard deviation comes in at 15.72%, compared to the category average of 13.01%. Looking at the past 5 years, the fund's standard deviation is 15.53% compared to the category average of 12.46%. This makes the fund more volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.
Risk Factors
Investors should always remember the downsides to a potential investment, and this segment carries some risks one should be aware of. PRHSX lost 35.67% in the most recent bear market and outperformed its peer group by 2.79%. This makes the fund a possibly better choice than its peers during a sliding market environment.
Nevertheless, with a 5-year beta of 1.01, the fund is likely to be as volatile as 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 positive alpha over the past 5 years of 5.08, which shows that managers in this portfolio are skilled in picking 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, PRHSX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.77% compared to the category average of 1.31%. PRHSX is actually cheaper than its peers when you consider factors like cost.
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 Health Sciences has a high Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively strong performance, average downside risk, and lower fees, T. Rowe Price Health Sciences looks like a good potential choice for investors right now.
For additional information on the Sector - Health 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 PRHSX 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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Is T. Rowe Price Health Sciences (PRHSX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now?
If you've been stuck searching for Sector - Health funds, consider T. Rowe Price Health Sciences (PRHSX - Free Report) as a possibility. PRHSX has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 2 (Buy), which is based on nine forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance.
Objective
We note that PRHSX is a Sector - Health fund, and this area is also loaded with various options. Sector - Health mutual funds give investors an opportunity to focus on one of the largest sectors of the American economy, healthcare. Funds in this category can include everything from for-profit hospitals to pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers.
History of Fund/Manager
T. Rowe Price is based in Baltimore, MD, and is the manager of PRHSX. T. Rowe Price Health Sciences debuted in December of 1995. Since then, PRHSX has accumulated assets of about $11.28 billion, according to the most recently available information. The fund is currently managed by Ziad Bakri who has been in charge of the fund since April of 2016.
Performance
Investors naturally seek funds with strong performance. This fund has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 18.52%, and it sits in the top 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 5.11%, 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, PRHSX's standard deviation comes in at 15.72%, compared to the category average of 13.01%. Looking at the past 5 years, the fund's standard deviation is 15.53% compared to the category average of 12.46%. This makes the fund more volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.
Risk Factors
Investors should always remember the downsides to a potential investment, and this segment carries some risks one should be aware of. PRHSX lost 35.67% in the most recent bear market and outperformed its peer group by 2.79%. This makes the fund a possibly better choice than its peers during a sliding market environment.
Nevertheless, with a 5-year beta of 1.01, the fund is likely to be as volatile as 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 positive alpha over the past 5 years of 5.08, which shows that managers in this portfolio are skilled in picking 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, PRHSX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.77% compared to the category average of 1.31%. PRHSX is actually cheaper than its peers when you consider factors like cost.
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 Health Sciences has a high Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively strong performance, average downside risk, and lower fees, T. Rowe Price Health Sciences looks like a good potential choice for investors right now.
For additional information on the Sector - Health 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 PRHSX 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.