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Is Fidelity Event Driven Opportunities Fund (FARNX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now?

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Having trouble finding an Index fund? Well, Fidelity Event Driven Opportunities Fund would not be a good potential starting point right now. FARNX carries a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 5 (Strong Sell), which is based on nine forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance.

History of Fund/Manager

FARNX finds itself in the Fidelity family, based out of Boston, MA. Since Fidelity Event Driven Opportunities Fund made its debut in December of 2013, FARNX has garnered more than $123.93 million in assets. Arvind Navaratnam is the fund's current manager and has held that role since December of 2013.

Performance

Of course, investors look for strong performance in funds. This fund has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 3.89%, and is in the middle 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 0.18%, which places it in the bottom 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 5 years, the standard deviation of the fund is 15.25% compared to the category average of 0.86%. This makes the fund more 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.

Nevertheless, with a 5-year beta of 1.04, the fund is likely to be more volatile than the market average. 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. FARNX has generated a negative alpha over the past five years of -6.41, demonstrating 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, FARNX is a no load fund and it has an expense ratio of 1.03%.

Investors need to be aware that with this product, the minimum initial investment is $0; each subsequent investment has no minimum amount.

Bottom Line

With a 'strong sell' rank, Fidelity Event Driven Opportunities Fund is in the bottom 20% of all the mutual funds we cover. This means that our models suggest it is one of the worst options for investors in Index right now, though this could change if the performance of the fund and the Zacks Ranks of the equities in FARNX turnaround in the next data release.

This could just be the start of your research on FARNXin the Index 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 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.

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