1.   In fact, a handful of its stock and balanced funds have pretty feeble five-year track records.

2.   Along with balanced funds, I would suggest you establish positions in mid-cap and small-cap stock funds.

3.   Among the managers buying them is Patrick S. Adams, who runs the Founders Blue Chip and Balanced funds in Denver.

4.   And as much as those funds shrank, so-called balanced funds grew.

5.   Another way to get yield into a portfolio is to buy shares of balanced funds, which tend to have a fixed allocation of stocks and bonds.

6.   As a first step, you might move some of the money that you now have in common stocks or stock funds into balanced funds.

7.   As for the balanced fund position, I would leave it out of the calculations.

8.   As with most balanced funds, the Dreyfus Balanced is more likely to rise less sharply in rising markets but also fall less dramatically in falling markets.

9.   Balanced funds divide their portfolio holdings among stocks and bonds, thus reducing overall risk.

10.   Balanced funds invest assets in both stocks and bonds.