Hi have any of you heard of American Balanced Fund? And if you have what are your thoughts?

Hi have any of you heard of American Balanced Fund? And if you have what are your thoughts?





While I'm not familiar with this specific mutual fund, and couldn't find the ticker symbol in a Yahoo search to find out any specifics. In general I'm not a big fan of "balanced" funds. The charter of these "balanced" funds dictates that they keep a portion of their assets invested in bonds, another portion invested in stocks, and sometimes another portion invested in GIC's or other commercial paper. The theory behind "balanced" funds is supposedly that by being "balanced" in regard to investments that the value of the fund shares will not suffer badly if, say, the stock market crashes, since part of the money was invested in bonds which generally move in opposite directions to stocks.
IMHO, and strictly my own opinion, putting money in a "balanced" fund guarantees from the beginning that you cannot earn a maximum rate of return because the different investments made by the fund by definition do not (supposedly) rise or fall together. However, in reality there is absolutely no guarantee that the value of a "balanced" fund can't decline. For this reason, if an investor is worried about guaranteed return with protection against possible loss of principal I'd recommend buying bank CD's - which ARE guaranteed against loss in exchange for a small percentage return. Also if an investor is willing to take risk then they can probably obtain a much higher rate of return in exchange for that risk by going with a hot 'sector' fund. Right now with the US$ declining, the hot 'sector' funds are those which invest in foreign stocks. I have one in my retirement portfolio JIGRX. Of course by owning a foreign stock fund I have to watch the US$ exchange rate and be ready to bail on the foreign stock fund shares if the US$ starts to rise again.
American Balanced Fund is an entity of the American funds group and its ticker symbol is ABALX. I have invested in this fund as well as most other American Funds and I Like the group and its results. You can easily move your cash between most of the other funds in the American group. The American Funds group is HUGE and one of the best managed funds out there. It is the basis of many corporate retirement plans and individual 401(k).
Good solid SAFE stuff for the long haul investor.
14 years working in Strip Clubs. "What a long strange trip it's been"





http://www.americanfunds.com/servlet...0-%20Class%20A
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ABALX
http://quicktake.morningstar.com/Fun...section=&pmts=
Just my opinion but that 5.75% front end load would be enough to scare me off.
Former SCJ now in rehab.
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