Is Brown Advisory Flexible Equity Investor (BIAFX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now?

If you have been looking for Allocation Balanced funds, a place to start could be Brown Advisory Flexible Equity Investor (BIAFX). BIAFX carries a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 2 (Buy), which is based on various forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance.

BIAFX is classified in the Allocation Balanced segment by Zacks, which is an area full of possibilities. Here, investors are able to get a good head start with diversified mutual funds, and play around with core holding options for a portfolio of funds. Allocation Balanced funds look to invest across a balance of asset types, like stocks, bonds, and cash, though including precious metals or commodities is not unusual; these funds are mostly categorized by their respective asset allocation.

BIAFX is a part of the Brown Adv Fds family of funds, a company based out of Baltimore, MD. The Brown Advisory Flexible Equity Investor made its debut in December of 2006 and BIAFX has managed to accumulate roughly $532.35 million in assets, as of the most recently available information. Maneesh Bajaj is the fund’s current manager and has held that role since October of 2017.

Investors naturally seek funds with strong performance. This fund in particular has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 16.06%, and it sits 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 13.9%, which places it in the middle 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. BIAFX’s standard deviation over the past three years is 17.17% compared to the category average of 16.24%. Over the past 5 years, the standard deviation of the fund is 17.25% compared to the category average of 17.16%. This makes the fund more volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.

The fund has a 5-year beta of 1.04, so investors should note that it is hypothetically more 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. The fund has produced a positive alpha over the past 5 years of 0.03, which shows that managers in this portfolio are skilled in picking securities that generate better-than-benchmark returns.