Three Global Balanced Funds Worth Buying

If you wanted to put all your eggs in one basket and forget about them, a global balanced fund seems hard to beat. Such an all-in-one fund invests in a broad range of stocks and bonds in the United States and overseas. You don't have to figure out how to distribute your money among different assets or markets. All you have to do is find a fund you trust.

And therein lies the rub. Very few global balanced funds are worth a hoot. The standouts in the category carry sales charges and charge high annual fees.

That's why three exchange-traded funds from Invesco PowerShares are so intriguing. The ETFs -- Autonomic Balanced NFA Global Asset Portfolio (symbol PCA), Autonomic Balanced Growth NFA Global Asset Portfolio (PAO) and Autonomic Growth NFA Global Asset Portfolio (PTO) -- are global balanced funds and the first of their kind to trade on a U.S. exchange. They track a sophisticated index that covers stocks, real estate, bonds, commodities and currencies in U.S. and foreign markets.

If you buy these funds of funds, you have to trust the black box built by New Frontier Advisors. Hardly a household name, the Boston research firm made its bones telling institutions where to put their money. New Frontier created a patented process that determines how to allocate money among a wide spectrum of assets.

The PowerShares funds are untested. Launched May 20, their short track records tell you nothing meaningful. But looking at the performance of the underlying indexes can give you a clue about how the funds behave. Over the past five years through May 31, the New Frontier Global Dynamic Balanced Index -- the one followed by the most conservative PowerShares fund -- returned an annualized 15 percent.