Make the Most of Your Retirement with These Top-Ranked Mutual Funds

There is never a wrong time to invest in mutual funds for retirement. So, if you're still looking for the best mutual funds, the Zacks Mutual Fund Rank can be a great guide.

How can you tell a good mutual fund from a bad one? It's pretty basic: if the fund is diversified, has low fees, and shows strong performance, it's a keeper. Of course, there's a wide range, but using the Zacks Mutual Fund Rank, we've found three mutual funds that would be great additions to any long-term investors' portfolios.

Let's take a look at some of our top-ranked mutual funds with the lowest fees.

LSV US Managed Volatility Inv (LVAMX): 0.8% expense ratio and 0.45% management fee. LVAMX is a Large Cap Value mutual fund, which invests in stocks with a market cap of $10 billion of more, but whose share prices do not reflect their intrinsic value. LVAMX has achieved five-year annual returns of an astounding 11.43%.

Hartford Schroder Intl Multi Val R4 (HFYSX): 1.16% expense ratio and 0.7% management fee. HFYSX is a Non US - Equity option, focusing their investments acoss emerging and developed markets, and can often extend across cap levels too. HFYSX, with annual returns of 13.79% over the last five years, is a well-diversified fund with a long track record of success.

Sterling Capital Behv Small Val R6 (STRBX) is an attractive large-cap allocation. STRBX is a Small Cap Value mutual fund, investing in small companies with stock market valuation less than $2 billion. STRBX has an expense ratio of 0.78%, management fee of 0.6%, and annual returns of 11.1% over the past five years.

These examples highlight the fact that there are some astonishingly good mutual funds out there. If your advisor has you in the good ones, bravo! If not, you may need to have a talk.

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

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