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Is AGDYX a Strong Bond Fund Right Now?

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If you're looking for a Mutual Fund Bond fund category, then a potential option is AB High Income Fund Adviser (AGDYX - Free Report) . AGDYX bears a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 3 (Hold), which is based on nine forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance.

History of Fund/Manager

AGDYX is a part of the AllianceBernstein family of funds, a company based out of New York, NY. Since AB High Income Fund Adviser made its debut in January of 2008, AGDYX has garnered more than $2.08 billion in assets. A team of investment professionals is the fund's current manager.

Performance

Of course, investors look for strong performance in funds. This fund has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 2.05%, and is in the bottom third among its category peers. Investors who prefer analyzing shorter time frames should look at its 3-year annualized total return of 2.08%, which places it in the bottom third during this time-frame.

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. Compared to the category average of 13.83%, the standard deviation of AGDYX over the past three years is 12.56%. Looking at the past 5 years, the fund's standard deviation is 10.08% compared to the category average of 12.18%. This makes the fund less volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.

AGDYX carries a beta of 0.4, meaning that the fund is less volatile than a broad market index of fixed income securities. With this in mind, it has a positive alpha of 1.37, which measures performance on a risk-adjusted basis.

Ratings

Investors should also consider a bond's rating, which is a grade ( 'AAA' to 'D' ) given to a bond that indicates its credit quality. With this letter scale in mind, AGDYX 's junk bond component-bonds rated 'BB' or below-is at 75.58%. This means that the fund has an average quality of BBB, and focuses on medium quality securities.

Expenses

For investors, taking a closer look at cost-related metrics is key, since costs are increasingly important for mutual fund investing. Competition is heating up in this space, and a lower cost product will likely outperform its otherwise identical counterpart, all things being equal. In terms of fees, AGDYX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.59% compared to the category average of 0.98%. From a cost perspective, AGDYX is actually cheaper than its peers.

This fund requires a minimum initial investment of $0, while there is no minimum for each subsequent investment.

Bottom Line

Overall, AB High Income Fund Adviser ( AGDYX ) has a neutral Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively weak performance, average downside risk, and lower fees, AB High Income Fund Adviser ( AGDYX ) looks like a somewhat average choice for investors right now.

Don't stop here for your research on Mutual Fund Bond funds. We also have plenty more on our site in order to help you find the best possible fund for your portfolio. Make sure to check out www.zacks.com/funds/mutual-funds for more information about the world of funds, and feel free to compare AGDYX to its peers as well for additional information. If you want to check out our stock reports as well, make sure to go to Zacks.com to see all of the great tools we have to offer, including our time-tested Zacks Rank.


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