The best second quarter performer from a T. Rowe Price mutual fund was not robust, but sufficient in a tough quarter where broader markets struggled to maintain a seat in the positive zone. Though T. Rowe Price's best gain of 6.2% lagged key players like Fidelity, PIMCO and Franklin/Temp , the fund family managed to post better gains than peers including Oppenheimer, Lord Abbett and Vanguard Group.
Read: Best Performing Fidelity Mutual Funds of Q2 2015
T. Rowe Price's quarterly gain is short of the second quarter's top performer ProFunds UltraChina Inv (UGPIX – MF report) which managed a gain of almost 16%. Also, gains look very modest going beyond the top 10 of the T. Rowe Price performers. However, if we look at broader markets then we do notice the dismal trend. There were only 15 funds (excluding same funds of different classes) that could post above a 10% gain in the second quarter, reflecting the muted quarterly performance.
Also, only four of the mutual fund categories could post above a 10% gain in the first half. Just 41% of mutual funds could manage to finish in the green in the second quarter. This is less than half of the 81% gains scored by mutual funds in the first quarter. These losses however owed a lot to the selloff on the eve of the quarter's end.
Of the 181 T. Rowe Price mutual funds under the study, 98 funds finished in the green while 2 funds, T. Rowe Price Global Allocation Adv (PAFGX – MF report) and T. Rowe Price Instl Glbl Growth Eq (RPIGX – MF report), had a break even return. Average gain for the 98 funds stood at 1.04%. The other 79 funds ended in the red with an average loss of 1.22%. Only 6 funds had above 5% loss, with the largest loss reaching 9.95%, coming from T. Rowe Price real estate Adv (PAREX – MF report). (Note: This number includes funds from same classes).
T. Rowe Price's Second Quarter Wrap Up
T. Rowe Price notes that Greek debt crisis concerns had offset the “resilient corporate earnings growth and enthusiasm about a reaccelerating U.S. economy” to drag Dow down to the red in the second quarter. Among the major benchmarks, small caps outperformed while mid caps had the worst performance.
