Tens of millions of Americans invest through a Fidelity brokerage or retirement account. However, even if you don’t have a dime saved in any sort of Fidelity account, you can still yoke your portfolio to this famed investment titan.
All you need is a handful of Fidelity’s best mutual funds, which for nearly eight decades have built their reputation on sterling human management or, in more recent years, the smart, cost-efficient indexes they track.
That said, you might come across a little trouble whittling down Fidelity’s lineup, which currently sits at more than 200 products strong. It would be easy to get lost trying to sift through all of those funds trying to determine which mutual funds stand out from the rest … not to mention many of those funds have multiple share classes, making it more difficult to determine which products you can actually access.
But I’ll make it easy on you.
Today, I’m going to look at Fidelity’s best mutual funds across numerous categories. Every fund on this list showcases either Fidelity’s track record as a haven for smart stock and bond pickers, or its ability to provide superior index funds with thin fees. And importantly: Every fund listed here represents an Investor-class share available to average Joes and Janes at no investment minimum.
Editor’s Note: Tabular data presented in this article is up-to-date as of March 12, 2026.
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Disclaimer: This article does not constitute individualized investment advice. Individual securities, funds, and/or other investments appear for your consideration and not as personalized investment recommendations. Act at your own discretion.
Table of Contents
Why Fidelity Mutual Funds?
Fidelity is a leader in mutual funds (and exchange-traded funds, for that matter) and has been a force in the industry since the launch of its Fidelity Puritan Fund (FPURX) back in 1947.
Today, this premier mutual fund company has $18 trillion in assets under administration thanks in large part to the success of its talented fund managers. Most notably, that includes Peter Lynch, the longtime manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund (FMAGX) who averaged an incredible 29.2% per year between 1977 and 1990.
However, while Fidelity first built its name on actively managed funds, over the past three decades, the firm has built out its low-cost and even no-cost index funds as part of the movement to reduce expense ratios and transaction costs for individual investors.
The end result? A fund lineup that can serve just about every need, and that’s typically competitive on price.
How Were the Best Fidelity Mutual Funds Selected?
Fidelity offers up quite the collection of mutual funds—in the hundreds, in fact, making it easy to succumb to analysis paralysis.
To whittle our way down to a more manageable list of the truly best Fidelity mutual funds, I started the same way I begin most of my reviews: by booting up Morningstar Investor and running a quality screen I customize for each article. In this case, I looked for only Fidelity mutual funds that have earned a Gold Morningstar Medalist rating.
Unlike Morningstar’s Star ratings, which are based upon past performance, Morningstar Medalist ratings are a forward-looking analytical view of a fund. Per Morningstar:
“For actively managed funds, the top three ratings of Gold, Silver, and Bronze all indicate that our analysts expect the rated investment vehicle to produce positive alpha relative to its Morningstar Category index over the long term, meaning a period of at least five years. For passive strategies, the same ratings indicate that we expect the fund to deliver alpha relative to its Morningstar Category index that is above the lesser of the category median or zero over the long term.”
As I’ve written in other Young and the Invested articles, a Medalist rating doesn’t mean Morningstar is necessarily bullish on the underlying asset class or categorization. It’s simply an expression of confidence in the fund compared to its peers.
Fidelity actually has dozens of Gold-rated funds, but several of them are specific share classes that are only available to certain subsets of investors—those enrolled in Fidelity Wealth Services, for instance, or those enrolled in eligible employer-sponsored retirement plans. So I’ve further narrowed the list to only Investor-class funds. Importantly, these funds typically offer no investment minimums, meaning you can get started for as little as one dollar.
From the remaining universe of funds, I selected a range of both indexed and actively managed mutual funds displaying the best Fidelity has to offer. This list includes both core portfolio holdings, as well as satellite products you can use to try to generate alpha.
The Best Fidelity Mutual Funds to Buy
As mentioned before, Fidelity boasts some of the fund industry’s top managers. So while this list of Fidelity’s best mutual funds includes a few dirt-cheap index funds, I’ve highlighted several actively managed products—both core and satellite holdings alike—that demonstrate the firm’s ability to identify the market’s best opportunities.
Also, every fund highlighted on this list boasts annual expenses that are at least below their category average. So while Fidelity’s actively managed funds might be more expensive than your average index fund, you’re still getting good relative value. (That said, if you have access to more inexpensive share classes via your wealth manager, retirement plan, or elsewhere, use those instead!)
One last reminder: Each fund on this list has no investment minimums. So you can get started with as little or as much capital as you’d like.
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1. Fidelity 500 Index Fund
— Style: U.S. large-cap stock
— Management: Index
— Assets under management: $740.0 billion
— Dividend yield: 1.1%
— Expense ratio: 0.015%, or 15¢ per year for every $1,000 invested
If a major mutual fund provider’s lineup includes a cheap S&P 500 index fund, chances are it’ll be one of their best-rated funds, and that’s the case here with Fidelity 500 Index Fund (FXAIX).
The logic goes like this: The S&P 500 Index is commonly used as a performance benchmark for mutual funds that invest in U.S.-based large-cap stocks*. But the majority of fund managers who run these funds typically struggle to beat their benchmark. Consider the following, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices:
- In 2025, 79% of all active large-cap U.S. equity funds underperformed the S&P 500.
- Over the past 10 years, 86% of those funds fell short of the index.
- That number ticked up to almost 90% over the trailing 15-year period.
“I know guys that rate active managers in all these categories, and even they’re like, ‘I’m not buying actively managed large blend; I’m just indexing,'” says Daniel Sotiroff, Senior Analyst for ETF and Passive Strategies at Morningstar. “Because it’s so brutally tough to beat a dirt-cheap index fund in the large blend category.”
Related: How to Rebalance Your Portfolio: A Quick Guide
So if even the pros can’t beat it, shouldn’t we just join it?
The S&P 500 Index is a collection of 500 of the largest American businesses, and a barometer of the American stock market. The index requires a few other criteria for a company to join, including a market cap of at least $22.7 billion, highly liquid shares (the stock is frequently bought and sold), and more. There’s a bit of a quality check, too: A company must also have positive earnings in the most recent quarter, and the sum of its previous four quarters must be positive. (Note: Once a company becomes an S&P 500 component, it’s not automatically kicked out if it fails to meet all of the criteria. However, the selection committee would take this under consideration and possibly boot the company.)
People like to consider the S&P 500 a reflection of the U.S. economy. But it’s hardly a perfect representation. For instance, the technology sector accounts for 35% of FXAIX’s assets; however, utilities, real estate, and materials merit less than 3% apiece. This is in no small part because, like many indexes, the S&P 500 is market capitalization-weighted, which means the greater the size of the company, the more “weight” it’s given in the index. Currently, trillion-dollar-plus companies Nvidia (NVDA), Apple (AAPL), and Google parent Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) sit atop Fidelity 500 Index Fund’s holdings list at weights of 6%-8% apiece, meaning their individual performances have a very outsized effect on the fund’s returns compared to the other components.
Related: Best Fidelity Retirement Funds for a 401(k) Plan
Turnover, which is how much the fund tends to buy and sell holdings, is always low, given that only a handful of stocks enter or leave the index in any given year. This tamps down (and often eliminates) capital-gains distributions, which receive unfavorable tax treatment. This makes FXAIX an extremely tax-efficient option for taxable brokerage accounts.
It’s this combination of traits—the S&P 500’s excellence as an index, bare-bones costs, and tax efficiency—that earn this Fidelity index fund a Gold Medalist rating from Morningstar. In fact, FXAIX is one of the cheapest ways to buy the S&P 500 across mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) alike.
All of this makes FXAIX not just one of the best Fidelity index funds you can buy and one of its best products overall, but one of the best mutual funds on the whole darn market.
* There are different ways to define “cap” levels. We’re adhering to Morningstar’s definition, which says the largest 70% of companies by market capitalization within a fund’s “style” are large caps, the next 20% by market cap are mid-caps, and the smallest 10% by market cap are small caps.
Related: 9 Best Schwab Funds You Can Buy: Low Fees, Low Minimums
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2. Fidelity Growth Company Fund
— Style: U.S. large-cap growth stock
— Management: Active
— Assets under management: $83.1 billion
— Dividend yield: <0.1%
— Expense ratio: 0.69%, or $6.90 per year for every $1,000 invested
If you did want to try to beat the index, Fidelity Growth Company Fund (FDGRX) has historically been up for the job.
Fidelity Growth Company is an actively managed large-cap growth fund, helmed since 1997 by Steven Wymer. S&P 500 funds (like FXAIX) are considered large-cap “blend” funds because they hold both growth stocks and value stocks. But FDGRX wants to exclusively hold the former. Specifically, Wymer says he seeks out firms “operating in well-positioned industries and niches that we believe are capable of delivering persistent sales and earnings growth.” He also prefers companies that fund their own growth (through cash, in other words, not debt) and “benefit from management teams focused on creating long-term shareholder value.”
Related: 15 Best Long-Term Stocks to Buy and Hold Forever
FDGRX is predominantly large-cap in nature, with about 75% of its weight in bigger companies, 15% in mid-caps and 5% in small caps. And unlike many actively managed products, which tend to hold fewer stocks (often in the dozens) than broader index funds (in the hundreds or thousands), Wymer has built a roughly 600-company portfolio … albeit one with hallmark overweights to certain stocks. For instance, Wymer is even more exposed to Nvidia (17%), Alphabet (8%), and SanDisk (SNDK, 4%) than the S&P 500.
“Fidelity Growth Company’s long-term success owes much to the stock-picking prowess of manager Steve Wymer—and especially to his early embrace of Nvidia, whose extraordinary ascent in recent years has made it a defining force in the portfolio,” says Morningstar Principal Robby Greengold.
Related: The 13 Best Mutual Funds You Can Buy for 2026
Fidelity Growth Company is benchmarked against the Russell 3000 Growth Index, which is more of a total-market benchmark (holding large-, medium-, and small-cap stocks) than the predominantly large-cap S&P 500. Doesn’t matter—Wymer has clobbered both indexes over every meaningful time frame. FDGRX’s average annual returns are also within the top 1% of all category funds over the trailing 10- and 15-year periods, and within the top 5% across the trailing three- and five-year periods. That’s more than good enough to merit a spot among Fidelity’s best mutual funds.
I do need to point out that fees have actually risen from our last update a couple months ago, from 0.52% to 0.69%. FDGRX still boasts below-average expenses at that level, but it’s not as cheap as it once was.
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3. Fidelity Equity-Income
— Style: Large-cap dividend stock
— Management: Active
— Assets under management: $11.4 billion
— Dividend yield: 1.5%
— Expense ratio: 0.53%, or $5.30 per year for every $1,000 invested
Fidelity Equity-Income (FEQIX) is one of Fidelity’s less scintillating products. This income-focused, large-cap value fund will never be a topic of water-cooler conversation, and in fact, it will typically lag a little when the market is screaming higher.
But if you find yourself in peril, you’ll love having it in your corner.
Related: 14 Best Investing Research & Stock Analysis Websites
FEQIX invests in more than 120 large-cap stocks, mostly U.S.-based blue chips like JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Exxon Mobil (XOM), and Dividend Aristocrat Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) that pay out better-than-average dividends. You do get some international exposure (about 15% of assets currently), with the same focus on big, dividend-paying firms such as AstraZeneca (AZN) and GSK (GSK). Technically, manager Ramona Persaud is allowed to invest in debt securities and even trade covered calls to manage the fund’s assets, but right now, the fund’s assets are virtually all in equities, with about 3% in cash.
This kind of portfolio construction lends itself to less upside in bull markets but better protection during bear markets and other downturns. It outperformed the market slightly during the COVID crash and late 2018 downturn, and by a much wider margin during the 2022 bear market and through 2025’s spring turbulence.
Related: 7 Best High-Yield Dividend ETFs for Income-Hungry Investors
“Persaud consistently strives for the best possible approach grounded in details and data,” Morningstar Senior Analyst Todd Trubey says. “Her training as an engineer anchored her emphasis on structure and stability, which informs the weight she puts on traversing difficult periods successfully and the precision she uses to generate downside protection. But unlike many investors who stress quantitative rigor, she invokes the art of investing often and consistently demonstrates humility when the market shifts.”
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4. Fidelity Mid Cap Index Fund
— Style: U.S. mid-cap stock
— Management: Index
— Assets under management: $45.8 billion
— Dividend yield: 1.0%
— Expense ratio: 0.025%, or 25¢ per year for every $1,000 invested
Mid-cap stocks are a way to thread the needle between the relative size and stability of large-cap stocks and the high growth potential of small-cap stocks. Indeed, this ideal middle ground has earned mid-caps the nickname of “Goldilocks” stocks.
Related: 9 Best Fidelity ETFs for 2026 [Invest Tactically]
“Since 1978, mid-cap stocks have outperformed small-caps over each of these rolling time periods: five, 10, 20, 30 and 40 years,” says Oregon-based equity manager Jensen Investment Management. “They’ve even bested large-caps over the 30- and 40-year windows. These returns came with lower volatility than small-caps as well, making the evidence even more compelling.
“That means mid-caps haven’t just delivered better performance—they’ve done it more consistently, with fewer drawdowns.”
Fidelity Mid Cap Index Fund (FSMDX) is an exceedingly cost-efficient way to tap this area of the market. FSMDX tracks the Russell MidCap Index, which is made up of the 800 smallest stocks in the Russell 1000 (which is itself an index of the U.S. market’s 1,000 largest stocks). As a result, you’re getting exposure to around 800 mostly mid-cap stocks—the fund usually is 75% weighted in mids, with another 5%-10% in smaller large caps, and another 10%-15% in larger small caps.
Related: 11 Best Vanguard Funds for the Everyday Investor
Why not 100% mid-caps? It’s hard to know for sure; some fund companies define mid-caps differently, while others might want a broader portfolio than what pure mid-caps alone can provide. Regardless, it’s actually common across the fund industry for 15%-30% of a mid-cap fund’s holdings to bleed into small- and/or large-company territory, and some funds invest even more outside of mid-caps. Where FSMDX stands out is that it “tends to go higher up the market-cap ladder than other mid-cap indexes, favoring large-cap stocks that tend to be more established than mid-cap stocks,” Morningstar says.
Sector weights will naturally change over time as certain businesses come into and go out of favor, but right now, industrials are tops at 18%, followed by technology stocks (15%), financials (13%), consumer discretionary (12%), and health care (10%). Also, thanks to both the market cap-weighting of the Russell MidCap Index and the high number of holdings, single-stock risk is minimal—all stocks account for less than 1% of assets.
A sound methodology for Wall Street’s mid-sized companies, dirt-cheap fee, and strong historical performance all make FSMDX one of the best Fidelity funds you can buy.
Related: The 12 Best Vanguard ETFs for 2026 [Build a Low-Cost Portfolio]
5. Fidelity Select Medical Technology and Devices Portfolio
— Style: Sector (Health)
— Management: Active
— Assets under management: $3.7 billion
— Dividend yield: <0.1%
— Expense ratio: 0.63%, or $6.30 per year for every $1,000 invested
Fidelity has roughly 30 “Select” funds—the company’s name for its sector- and industry-specific funds. Several of these funds currently boast Morningstar Gold Medalist ratings and thus deserve a spot among the best Fidelity funds you can buy; I’ll cover a pair of them in this article.
First up is the Fidelity Select Medical Technology and Devices Portfolio (FSMEX).
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FSMEX is a health care sector fund, and an oddball at that. While most health care sector funds will be highest on pharmaceuticals and biotechnology stocks, manager Eddie Lee Yoon’s 63-holding portfolio, which is almost entirely invested in domestic firms, is mostly dedicated to health care equipment (47% of assets) and life sciences tools and services (35%). The remaining portfolio is peppered with small holdings in health care technology, health care services, biotech, pharma, and other health care industries.
Fidelity Select Medical Tech and Devices does have something in common with your average health care fund, though: single-stock concentration. Many sector funds are cap-weighted and, as a result, often have a few allocations in the high single digits and even double digits. While FSMEX is hand-selected and not cap-weighted, Yoon holds a few outsized positions—most notably Boston Scientific (BSX, 14%), Danaher (DHR, 13%), Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO, 10%), and Intuitive Surgical (ISRG, 7%).
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And while FSMEX is certainly more expensive than your typical sector index fund, it has largely been worth it.
Morningstar, in explaining its Gold rating, states that at FSMEX, “Edward Yoon has delivered superior performance, outperforming both the category benchmark and average category peer for the past 10-year period.” Morningstar adds that a personal investment of between $500,000 and $1 million in FSMEX is a positive contributor to the rating: “This effort aligns interests with shareholders by investing alongside them.”
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6. Fidelity Select Semiconductor Portfolio
— Style: Industry (Semiconductors)
— Management: Active
— Assets under management: $32.7 billion
— Dividend yield: <0.1%
— Expense ratio: 0.62%, or $6.20 per year for every $1,000 invested
While many investors unload their sector-specific needs to basic index exchange-traded funds (ETFs), Fidelity manager Adam Benjamin makes a case for human stewardship with his Fidelity Select Semiconductors Portfolio (FSELX).
The long-term appeal of chips is pretty straightforward: As both our personal and business worlds become increasingly dependent on technology, semiconductor companies—which design and manufacture one of the most essential components of technology—stand to benefit. And some of the greatest opportunities rest within those semiconductor companies powering emergent and high-growth technologies such as data centers, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.
Related: 9 Best Schwab ETFs to Buy [Build Your Core for Cheap]
Benjamin, who has led the fund for five years, aims to beat the broader semiconductor industry by picking winners and losers within the space. In addition to single-company research, Benjamin also attempts to identify themes that will impact the largest end markets, and determine how technology disruptors might impact incumbent companies.
FSELX’s 60-stock portfolio might seem tight, but it’s pretty standard for a single-industry fund. The same goes for the massive 25% weight in Nvidia—as it goes, so too goes most semiconductor portfolios, not just Benjamin’s pick list.
Kudos to Benjamin and Fidelity Select Semiconductors: In addition to earning a Gold Medalist rating, they have beaten every meaningful benchmark—the S&P 500, the technology sector, the MSCI US IMI Information Technology 25/50 Index—across every significant time frame. Indeed, FSELX has been in the top 2% of tech-stock funds across the trailing three-, five-, and 10-year periods, and it’s in the top 1% over the trailing 15 years.
Related: The 10 Best Dividend ETFs [Get Income + Diversity]
7. Fidelity Real Estate Investment Portfolio
— Style: Sector (Real estate)
— Management: Active
— Assets under management: $3.1 billion
— Dividend yield: 2.1%
— Expense ratio: 0.64%, or $6.40 per year for every $1,000 invested
Fidelity Pacific Basin (FPBFX), which has been booted from our list, remains an excellent fund. But it wasn’t cheap to begin with, and its early 2026 fee hike, from 0.87% before to 0.98% currently, was enough for Morningstar to double-downgrade it, from Gold to Bronze. With that, Pacific Basin exits, and Fidelity Real Estate Investment Portfolio (FRESX) takes its place.
Fidelity Real Estate Investment Portfolio, as the name implies, doesn’t exactly replace Pacific Basin’s strategy. Instead, it fills a different hole this list has long suffered due to a dearth of qualifying attributes: the real estate sector.
FRESX owns real estate investment trusts (REITs)—a specially structured type of company that owns and sometimes operates real estate. REITs enjoy a special tax status that allows them to avoid corporate taxation so long as they distribute at least 90% of their net profits as dividends. Because of this tax incentive, REITs tend to be one of the highest-yielding sectors and a perennial favorite among income investors.
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By the way: This tax status was built in by Congress when it created REITs as part of the Cigar Excise Tax Extension of 1960. REITs were brought to life to give regular Joes and Janes like us to invest in real estate. After all, most of us don’t have the six or seven digits it takes to buy investment properties, but we probably have the $20 or $30 it takes to buy a share of a REIT.
And we almost certainly have the lonely dollar it takes to make an initial purchase in the Fidelity Real Estate Investment Portfolio.
Manager Steve Buller, who has been with the fund since 1998, has built a tight portfolio of 43 REITs representing a variety of industries. Top holdings right now include the likes of logistics specialist Prologis (PLD), datacenter landlord Equinix (EQIX), and telecommunications infrastructure REIT American Tower (AMT).
FRESX’s most noteworthy weakness is a low yield (2.1%) compared to similar funds. But it’s nonetheless a rare real estate sector product that simultaneously boasts respectable returns, accessibility to all investors, and a Gold Morningstar rating—one that Morningstar chalks up to low relative costs, a strong process, and the fact that Buller has invested more than $1 million in the strategy, “demonstrating a commendable effort to align interests with shareholders.”
One important tax note: REITs tend to pay nonqualified dividends, which are taxed as ordinary income (thus as high as 37%, depending on your federal tax bracket). In other words: They’re very tax-inefficient. So if at all possible, you’ll want to hold REITs and REIT funds like FRESX in a tax-advantaged plan like a 401(k) or IRA to negate those tax consequences.
Related: 8 Best Schwab Index Funds for Thrifty Investors
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8. Fidelity Total International Index Fund
— Style: International all-cap stock
— Management: Index
— Assets under management: $23.6 billion
— Dividend yield: 2.5%
— Expense ratio: 0.06%, or 60¢ per year for every $1,000 invested
U.S. markets have long been among the most productive in the world, and if you believe in the American economy’s ability to keep growing, that should remain the case—and thus, most experts would tell you to own primarily U.S. stock and bond funds.
But those same experts would tell you that it’s worth having at least some international exposure, and you can do that mighty inexpensively through the Fidelity Total International Index Fund (FTIHX).
Related: The Best Dividend Stocks: 10 Pro-Grade Income Picks for 2026
FTIHX tracks an international index that holds large-, mid-, and small-cap stocks in both developed and emerging markets—basically anywhere that isn’t the U.S. And its passport is covered in stamps. The fund holds well more than 5,00 stocks across a few dozen countries.
Like with most index funds, Fidelity Total International Index Fund hardly does any of this equally. Geographically speaking, this Fidelity mutual fund favors developed markets, including Japan (14%), the U.K. (9%), and Canada (8%). From a company-size perspective, it’s predominantly large-cap in nature—nearly 80% of the portfolio is invested in big, blue-chip international firms such as Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), Swiss pharma company Roche (RHHBY), and British financial HSBC Holdings (HSBC). That’s common for international funds, and it tends to result in dividend yields that are much bigger than U.S. large-cap funds—FTIHX’s yield is well more than double the S&P 500’s.
Related: 7 Best High-Yield Dividend Stocks: The Pros’ Picks for 2026
I will note, however, that while Fidelity Total International Index Fund does enjoy a Morningstar Gold medalist rating, a lot of that is shouldered by its dirt-cheap investment fee. FTIHX’s historical performance has been good, but not necessarily excellent.
Are you compelled to build the lowest-fee portfolio possible? Do you have a Fidelity account (or are you willing to open one)? If so, you can own a similar, Silver-rated fund—Fidelity ZERO International Index Fund (FZILX)—for an annual fee of literally nothing.
9. Fidelity Investment Grade Bond Fund
— Style: Intermediate-term core bond
— Management: Active
— Assets under management: $12.2 billion
— SEC yield: 4.0%*
— Expense ratio: 0.45%, or $4.50 per year for every $1,000 invested
Most investors need some exposure to bonds, which is debt that’s issued by governments, companies, and other entities. Their interest payments and relative lack of volatility make them an excellent tool for providing a portfolio with stability and income. But how much bond exposure you need will vary by age—because they’re better at protecting wealth than growing it, people typically start with little in the way of bond holdings earlier in life, then gradually hold more bonds as they get closer to (and into) retirement. (Purpose-built investment products called target-date funds capture this dynamic automatically for investors.)
Related: The 10 Best Vanguard Index Funds to Buy in 2026
But individual bonds can be a hassle. Data and research on individual issues is much thinner than it is for publicly traded stocks. And some bonds have minimum investments in the tens of thousands of dollars. But you can blunt these problems by purchasing a bond fund, which allows you to invest in hundreds or even thousands of bonds with a single click—and, in many cases, very low fees.
Core bond funds like the Fidelity Investment Grade Bond Fund (FBNDX) are the, ahem, gold standard.
It’s “everything you want in a core bond fund,” Morningstar Senior Analyst Max Curtin says.
FBNDX’s five co-managers have built a portfolio of more than 4,600 investment-grade securities spanning numerous debt types. The fund’s largest current allocation is to U.S. Treasury bonds, which command 47% of assets. It also has a 22% weight in corporate bonds, 12% in pass-through mortgage-backed securities (MBSes), 9% in asset-backed securities (ABSes), 5% in commercial MBSes, and sprinklings of other debt.
Related: 8 Best-in-Class Bond Funds to Buy
Diversification goes beyond debt categories, too. The fund holds bonds with maturities of between just a few months and more than 20 years, though the biggest slug (~54%) is in medium-term bonds of four to eight years until maturity. Duration, a measure of interest-rate sensitivity, is 5.9 years. While the actual calculation is much more complex, this basically implies that for every 1-percentage-point increase in interest rates, FBNDX would suffer a short-term decline of 5.9%, and vice versa. It’s a moderate amount of risk, but no more.
“Strict guardrails around duration, a measure of interest-rate risk, help to limit that volatility when there are big moves in interest rates,” Curtin says. “The team often keeps the portfolio’s duration within one third of a year of its Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index’s.”
From a performance standpoint, Fidelity Investment Grade Bond’s management has been up to the task, beating both its category average and index over every meaningful time period. It is particularly productive over the long-term, sitting in the top 10% of funds over the trailing 10- and 15-year periods.
Long story short: Fund shareholders are instantly plugged into a widely diversified and well-selected set of fixed-income assets, and at a very reasonable cost. This makes FBNDX one of the best Fidelity mutual funds to buy for anyone who wants to buy a single core bond product and call it a day.
* SEC yield reflects the interest earned across the most recent 30-day period. This is a standard measure for funds holding bonds and preferred stocks.
Related: The 7 Best Closed-End Funds (CEFs) for 2026
10. Fidelity Total Bond Fund
— Style: Intermediate-term core-plus bond
— Management: Active
— Assets under management: $43.4 billion
— SEC yield: 4.3%
— Expense ratio: 0.45%, or $4.50 per year for every $1,000 invested
Fidelity’s FBNDX is referred to as a “core” bond fund, which means it holds several types of core debt categories, such as U.S. Treasuries and investment-grade corporate bonds. Investors with a little more appetite for risk might also consider a “core-plus” bond fund, which also holds a variety of debt securities—but in addition to core bond categories, they can also hold noncore categories such as below-investment-grade (junk) corporate bonds and emerging-market debt.
One such core-plus fund is the Fidelity Total Bond Fund (FTBFX). A team of eight co-managers spreads the fund’s assets across 6,650 issues in a number of categories. Currently, it invests 41% of assets into U.S. government debt, another 26% in corporate debt, and 14% in pass-through MBSes. The rest is sprinkled across ABSes, CMBSes, foreign sovereign debt, and more.
Related: 7 Best Vanguard Dividend Funds [Low-Cost Income]
Sure, the portfolio isn’t a huge deviation from a typical core bond fund. But this isn’t a fully investment-grade portfolio like FBNDX—you’re getting some exposure to high-yield corporate debt (11%) and emerging-market bonds (3%), too.
Credit quality is still high overall. And while management holds bonds with maturities ranging anywhere from 20 years to a few months, the biggest chunk of bonds (51%) sits between zero and five years. Duration, meanwhile, is just a hair below six years.
Performance-wise, Fidelity Total Bond has been in the top quarter of its category peers over the trailing five-, 10-, and 15-year periods. And you’re buying that quality at a below-average 0.45% in annual fees.
Do you want to get serious about saving and planning for retirement? Sign up for Retire With Riley, Young and the Invested’s free retirement planning newsletter.
11. Fidelity Freedom Index Funds
— Style: Target-date
— Management: Index
— Assets under management (collectively): $200.0 billion
— Expense ratio: 0.12%, or $1.20 per year for every $1,000 invested
Target-date funds (TDFs) are the ultimate buy-and-hold instrument, meant to stay in your portfolio for literally decades.
In short, TDFs are funds that shift their asset allocation over time to meet investors’ changing needs as they age. A person who turned 25 in 2025 would expect to retire in 2065, so they’d buy a fund with a target retirement date of 2065. That fund will probably start out with a very heavy allocation to stocks (to grow the investors’ wealth), but as the years roll on and the fund approaches its target retirement date, it will start putting more of its assets into bonds (to protect the investors’ wealth).
Many fund providers have at least one target-date series, though larger asset managers sometimes offer more. Fidelity is well outside the norm, however, with a whopping four—and the highest-rated among them are the Fidelity Freedom Index Funds.
Fidelity Freedom Index Funds, which are built exclusively from Fidelity’s lineup of low-cost index funds, are a rarity—few target-date series can boast a Gold Medalist rating. That rating is due in no small part to extremely low costs. Unlike actively managed target-date funds whose management fees tend to be different across the series, all Fidelity Freedom Index Funds charge the same fee (0.12%).
Related: The 7 Best Fidelity Index Funds for Beginners
Here’s a quick look at the full lineup:
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2010 Fund (FKIFX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2015 Fund (FLIFX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2020 Fund (FPIFX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2025 Fund (FQIFX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2030 Fund (FXIFX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2035 Fund (FIHFX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2040 Fund (FBIFX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2045 Fund (FIOFX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2050 Fund (FIPFX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2055 Fund (FDEWX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2060 Fund (FDKLX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2065 Fund (FFIJX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index 2070 Fund (FRBVX)
— Fidelity Freedom Index Income Fund (FIKFX)
That last product, Fidelity Freedom Index Income Fund, is designed for people who have reached retirement, and it boasts the most conservative asset blend. When a Fidelity Freedom Index target-date fund expires, it merges with Fidelity Freedom Index Income.
For a longer explanation of all of Fidelity’s target-date lineups, check out our Beginner’s Guide to Fidelity Target-Date Funds.
Related: Best Target-Date Funds: Fidelity vs. Schwab vs. T. Rowe vs. Vanguard
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What Is the Minimum Investment Amount on Fidelity Mutual Funds?
Fidelity’s mutual funds (and ETFs, for that matter) make plenty of sense for investors of all shapes and sizes, but they have a particular appeal among people who don’t have much money to work with. That’s because many Fidelity mutual funds have no investment minimums—you can literally start with as little as $1.
That’s extremely beneficial in self-directed accounts like a brokerage or health savings account (HSA). Many mutual funds from other providers require high minimums in the thousands of dollars, hamstringing investors with little capital to work with.
Actively Managed Funds vs. Index Funds
There are infinite types of mutual funds, but all can be divided into two main camps:
— actively managed funds
— passively managed funds, also known as passive funds or, most commonly, index funds
Actively managed funds have professional managers that use their discretion to buy and sell securities. Whether they are value funds, growth funds, or anything in between, they are all essentially run the same way: A manager or team of managers buys and sells stocks, bonds, or other securities in the pursuit of price returns, dividends/income, or both.
Related: The 7 Best Mutual Funds for Beginners
Index funds, in contrast, are passive. There’s no manager actively looking to “beat the market.” The fund is simply looking to copy an index—which is based on a set of rules that the index automatically applies—enjoying that underlying investment exposure. Actively managed stock funds will try to cherry pick the stocks or bonds they like best. An index fund simply buys whatever its rules say to buy, then lets that portfolio run until it’s time to “rebalance” (apply the rules again).
The primary advantages of actively managed funds is that a talented manager can potentially outperform over time and may be adept at navigating a difficult period such as a bear market. But with an index fund, you generally get much lower costs in terms of management fees and trading expenses, better tax efficiency and performance that often ends up being better than that of many active managers.
Related: 5 Best Stock Recommendation Services [Stock Tips + Picks]
What Are Balanced Mutual Funds?
Balanced mutual funds, sometimes also called “hybrid funds” or “allocation funds,” hold both stocks and bonds. However, while the name might imply that all balanced funds hold an equal amount of stocks and bonds, that’s not quite the case.
Some balanced funds are “aggressive” and dedicate far greater assets to stocks than bonds—say, 80/20 stocks, or 70/30 stocks. Meanwhile, some balanced funds are “conservative” and invest most of their assets in bonds. Still more are much closer to a 50/50 split.
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How Are Mutual Funds Different From Exchange-Traded Funds?
There is a lot of overlap between traditional mutual funds and their cousins, exchange-traded funds (ETFs). That’s because exchange-traded funds are very similar to mutual funds, but with a few different traits.
Related: 7 Low- and Minimum-Volatility ETFs for Peace of Mind
Like traditional mutual funds, an ETF will hold a basket of stocks, bonds, and other securities. These can be broad and tied to a major index like the S&P 500, or they can be exceptionally narrow and focus on a specific sector or even a specific trading strategy. For the most part, anything that can be held in an exchange traded fund can also be held in a mutual fund.
But there are some major differences. When you invest in a mutual fund, you (or your broker) actually send money to the manager, who in turn uses the cash to buy stocks or other investments. When you want to sell, the manager will sell off a tiny piece of the securities the mutual fund owns and send you the proceeds. Money generally enters or exits the fund once per day.
Related: Buy ‘The Future’: 5 Tech Stock ETFs You Should Own in 2026
Exchange-traded funds, on the other hand, trade on the New York Stock Exchange or another major exchange like a stock. If you want to buy shares, you don’t send the manager money; you just buy shares from another investor on the open market.
There are two advantages here. The first is that ETFs allow for intraday liquidity. If you want to buy or sell in the middle of the trading day—or multiple times throughout the trading day—you can.
The second advantage is tax efficiency. In a traditional mutual fund, redemptions by investors can generate selling by the manager that creates taxable capital gains for the remaining investors who didn’t sell. This doesn’t happen with ETFs, as the manager isn’t forced to buy or sell anything when an investor sells their shares.
Related: The 9 Best ETFs for Beginners
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Why Does a Fund’s Expense Ratio Matter So Much?
Every dollar you pay in expenses is a dollar that comes directly out of your returns. So, it is absolutely in your best interests to keep your expense ratios to an absolute minimum.
The expense ratio is the percentage of your investment lost each year to management fees, trading expenses and other fund expenses. Because index funds are passively managed and don’t have large staffs of portfolio managers and analysts to pay, they tend to have some of the lowest expense ratios of all mutual funds.
This matters because every dollar not lost to expenses is a dollar that is available to grow and compound. And over an investing lifetime, even a half a percent can have a huge impact. If you invest just $1,000 in a fund generating 5% per year after fees, over a 30-year horizon, it will grow to $4,116. However, if you invested $1,000 in the same fund, but it had an additional 50 basis points in fees (so it only generated 4.5% per year in returns), it would grow to only $3,584 over the same period.
Want to talk more about your financial goals or concerns? Our services include comprehensive financial planning, investment management, estate planning, taxes, and more! Schedule a call with Riley to discuss what you need, and what we can do for you.
The 10 Best-Rated Dividend Aristocrats Right Now
Dividend growth puts more cash in our pockets and signals that the company we’re invested in is confident in its ability to keep churning out profits. And there’s no more heralded group of dividend growers than the Dividend Aristocrats, which are companies that have paid higher cash distributions each year for at least a quarter-century.
But even Aristocrats aren’t created equally. Check out which dividend growers Wall Street loves the best right now in our list of the top-rated Dividend Aristocrats.
Related: 10 Best Monthly Dividend Stocks for Frequent, Regular Income
The vast majority of American dividend stocks pay regular, reliable payouts—and they do so at a more frequent clip (quarterly) than dividend stocks in most other countries (typically every six months or year).
Still, if you’ve ever thought to yourself, “it’d sure be nice to collect these dividends more often,” you don’t have to look far. While they’re not terribly common, American exchanges boast dozens of monthly dividend stocks.
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