【floss drops for cross stitch】Is T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Growth (TRSGX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now?

If you've been stuck searching for Index funds,floss drops for cross stitch consider T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Growth (TRSGX) as a possibility. The fund does not have a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank, though we have been able to explore other metrics like performance, volatility, and cost.

History of Fund/Manager

T. Rowe Price is based in Baltimore, MD, and is the manager of TRSGX. T. Rowe Price Personal Strategy Growth made its debut in July of 1994, and since then, TRSGX has accumulated about $2.15 billion in assets, per the most up-to-date date available. The fund is currently managed by Charles M. Shriver who has been in charge of the fund since May of 2011.

Performance

Investors naturally seek funds with strong performance. This fund in particular has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 7.05%, and it sits in the middle third among its category peers. Investors who prefer analyzing shorter time frames should look at its 3-year annualized total return of 8.63%, 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. TRSGX's standard deviation over the past three years is 8.18% compared to the category average of 7.51%. Looking at the past 5 years, the fund's standard deviation is 8.55% compared to the category average of 8.68%. This makes the fund less volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.

Risk Factors

It's always important to be aware of the downsides to any future investment, so one should not discount the risks that come with this segment. TRSGX lost 48.21% in the most recent bear market and underperformed its peer group by 2.07%. 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 0.8, so investors should note that it is hypothetically less volatile than the market at large. 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. TRSGX has generated a negative alpha over the past five years of -1.79, demonstrating that managers in this portfolio find it difficult to pick 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, TRSGX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.66% compared to the category average of 0.74%. From a cost perspective, TRSGX is actually cheaper than its peers.

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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

Want even more information about TRSGX? Then go over to Zacks.com and check out our mutual fund comparison tool, and all of the other great features that we have to help you with your mutual fund analysis 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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