Is Cohen & Steers Realty Shares L (CSRSX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now?

Sector - Real Estate fund seekers should not consider taking a look at Cohen & Steers Realty Shares L (CSRSX) at this time. CSRSX bears a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 4 (Sell), which is based on various forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance.

Objective

CSRSX is one of many Sector - Real Estate funds to choose from. Sector - Real Estate mutual funds are known to invest in real estate investment trusts (REITs). A popular income vehicle thanks to its taxation rules, a REIT is required to pay out at least 90% of its income annually to avoid double taxation. This technique makes securities in these funds high dividend players, and even bond-like in some instances, though their risk is similar to equities.

History of Fund/Manager

CSRSX is a part of the Cohen & Steers family of funds, a company based out of New York, NY. Cohen & Steers Realty Shares L debuted in July of 1991. Since then, CSRSX has accumulated assets of about $5.23 billion, according to the most recently available information. The fund's current manager is a team of investment professionals.

Performance

Investors naturally seek funds with strong performance. This fund in particular has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 4.34%, and is in the top 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 10.01%, which places it in the top 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. Over the past three years, CSRSX's standard deviation comes in at 16.02%, compared to the category average of 11.74%. The fund's standard deviation over the past 5 years is 18.47% compared to the category average of 13.69%. This makes the fund more volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.

Risk Factors

With a 5-year beta of 0.94, 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. CSRSX has generated a negative alpha over the past five years of -7.15, 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, CSRSX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.88% compared to the category average of 0.96%. So, CSRSX is actually cheaper than its peers from a cost perspective.

Investors need to be aware that with this product, the minimum initial investment is $10,000; each subsequent investment has no minimum amount.

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

Bottom Line

Overall, even with its comparatively strong performance, average downside risk, and lower fees, Cohen & Steers Realty Shares L ( CSRSX ) has a low Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and therefore looks a somewhat weak choice for investors right now.

This could just be the start of your research on CSRSX in the Sector - Real Estate 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. Zacks provides a full suite of tools to help you analyze your portfolio - both funds and stocks - in the most efficient way possible.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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