3 Top-Ranked Balanced Mutual Funds for Impressive Returns

Balanced funds offer investors the convenience of buying into a single fund rather than holding both equity and bond funds. This category of funds also reduces a portfolio’s volatility, while providing higher returns than pure fixed-income investments.

The fund managers also enjoy the flexibility of changing the proportion of equity and fixed-income investments in response to market conditions. An upswing may prompt them to hold a relatively higher share of equity to maximize gains, whereas a downturn will see them shifting loyalties toward fixed-income investments to stem losses.

Below, we share with you three top-ranked balanced mutual funds, namely Victory Pioneer Balanced AOBLX, State Farm Balanced Fund STFBX and Vanguard Wellington Investor VWELX. Each has earned a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and is expected to outperform its peers in the future. Investors can click here to see the complete list of funds.

Victory Pioneer Balanced seeks capital growth and current income. Fund managers of AOBLX invest most of its assets, along with borrowing, if any, in securities of issuers that adhere to the fund’s environmental, social and governance criteria.

Victory Pioneer Balanced Fund has three-year annualized returns of 15.5%. As of April 2026, AOBLX had 59 issues with 8.2% of its assets invested in Alphabet.

State Farm Balanced Fund invests most of its net assets in equity securities of preferably large and medium-cap companies. STFBX advisors consider large and medium-cap companies as defined by S&P Dow Jones Indices at the time of investment.

State Farm Balanced Fund has three-year annualized returns of 14.5%. STFBX has an expense ratio of 0.14%.

Vanguard Wellington Investor primarily invests in dividend-paying stocks of well-established large companies, complemented by holdings in fixed income securities such as investment-grade corporate bonds, U.S. government and agency obligations, and mortgage-backed securities to provide stability and moderate current income.

Vanguard Wellington Investor has three-year annualized returns of 13.6%. Loren Moran has been one of the fund managers of VWELX since 2017.

To view the Zacks Rank and the past performance of all balanced mutual funds, investors can click here to see the complete list of balanced mutual funds.

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

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