3 Terrific T. Rowe Price Funds to Buy

T. Rowe Price boasts more than 150 mutual funds across a number of strategies—stock, bond, allocation, target-date, and more. That's many, many more than any one investor would ever need, but given their generally high overall quality, whittling it down to a few select choices isn't exactly easy.

I can help with that.

T. Rowe Price stands apart from many of its competitors because of its continued commitment and dedication to a human-centric approach to investing. While fund firms like Vanguard and BlackRock have aggressively built up product lineups controlled by rules-based indexes, the vast majority of T. Rowe Price's offerings continue to offer portfolios hand-picked by human managers and analysis teams—just like they have been for decades.

Today, we're going to look at a handful that stand apart from the pack.

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.

How Were the Best T. Rowe Price Funds Selected?

I start virtually every review of investment funds by booting up Morningstar Investor and running a quality screen I customize for each article. 

Related: The 13 Best Mutual Funds You Can Buy for 2026

Here, I began by singling out T. Rowe funds that have earned a Gold or Silver Morningstar Medalist rating, which is based on 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."

A Medalist rating doesn't mean Morningstar is necessarily bullish on the underlying asset class or categorization. It's merely an expression of confidence in the fund compared to its peers.

Unlike some of the other big-name fund providers, T. Rowe Price hasn't made a name for itself by pushing fees to the floor. So I've limited the list to T. Rowe mutual funds with costs that are at least considered average within their category, if not below average.

From the remaining universe of several dozen funds, I selected a range of products that address various core portfolio goals, have good-to-great track records, and are generally accessible to most investors (reasonable investment minimums, can be bought in most accounts).

Note: All of the T. Rowe Price funds listed here have a $2,500 minimum initial investment unless otherwise indicated (after that, additional purchase minimums are just $100) and are open to new investors. If you purchase these funds within an IRA, you can typically do so at smaller minimums, often just $1,000.

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The Best T. Rowe Price Mutual Funds to Buy

The following are a handful of selections from our full list of the best T. Rowe Price funds.

In no particular order …

T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth Fund

• Style: U.S. large-cap dividend-growth stock
• Assets under management: $23.5 billion
• Dividend yield: 0.9%
• Expense ratio: 0.64%, or $6.40 per year for every $1,000 invested
• Morningstar Medalist rating: Gold

All dividend funds aren't created equally. If you see a fund with "dividend" in its name and assume it's trying to deliver a superior dividend yield, chances are you'll be right more often than you'll be wrong. But that's not the case with T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth Fund (PRDGX).

PRDGX is a dividend-growth fund. This kind of strategy involves owning companies that regularly improve their payouts over time, which accomplishes a couple of things. 

For one, while it might not score you high current yield, it can generate a higher "yield on cost" down the road. Yield on cost is what you're actually earning based on the price at which you bought the stock. (Example: A $100 stock paying $1 in annual dividends yields 1%. But because you bought the stock at $50, your yield on cost is 2%.)

Also, dividend-growth stocks tend to be high-quality equities. After all, you can't sustainably increase how much cash you're shelling out to shareholders if you're unable to turn a profit—you need strong financials and excellent cash flows. So dividend growth is often considered a quality screen of sorts that ensures the fund owns a higher grade of company.

That's what you get with PRDGX.

Related: 15 Dividend Kings for Royally Resilient Income

"Like other dividend-focused strategies, [manager Thomas] Huber targets financially healthy companies capable of sustaining above-average payout growth, believing dividend growers offer attractive returns with lower volatility," Morningstar analyst Stephen Welch says.

Huber, who has run the fund for a quarter-century, is tasked with building a portfolio of companies "that have a strong track record of paying dividends or that are expected to increase their dividends over time." I emphasize "or" because it's … well, different. Many dividend-growth index funds are required, thanks to the rules that govern the index, to own companies that have improved their payouts without interruption for some set period of time. That's not the case with T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth. Huber has full discretion here. 

For instance, top-10 holding Ross Stores (ROST) actually suspended its distribution for a few quarters in 2020—and was booted from the Dividend Aristocrats as a result. However, it resumed payouts in 2021 at its previous level and has raised each year since then, so it's certainly a dividend grower once more.

But ROST is an outlier. The fund's 92-stock portfolio is chock-full of blue-chip serial dividend raisers such as Visa (V), Chubb (CB), and Walmart (WMT).

I'll also note that the actively managed T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth ETF (TDVG) offers similar exposure and charges 0.50% annually.

Related: 10 Monthly Dividend Stocks for Frequent, Regular Income

T. Rowe Price Global Stock Fund

• Style: Global large-cap growth stock
• Assets under management: $8.3 billion
• Dividend yield: 0.1%
• Expense ratio: 0.81%, or $8.10 per year for every $1,000 invested
• Morningstar Medalist rating: Gold

The U.S. has been one of the world's most fruitful stock markets for decades. So if you believe in the American economy's ability to keep growing, naturally, you should continue to invest the lion's share of your money in U.S. assets.

Still, many advisors will tell you it's important to diversify geographically, too—a little hedging of bets, sure, but also, there are hundreds of high-achieving companies scattered across the globe, and it makes sense to have a little exposure to those firms, too.

Related: 11 Best Vanguard Funds for the Everyday Investor

You can get the best of both worlds with the T. Rowe Price Global Stock Fund (PRGSX).

An important note about fund terminology. The word "international" in a fund's name implies its holdings come from anywhere but America. However, the word "global" implies that the fund holds both U.S. and international stocks. PRGSX is the latter. This 136-stock portfolio, which is overwhelmingly large-cap in nature and has a clear bent toward growth stocks, is split roughly 55% domestic/45% foreign. The international portion of the portfolio is most heavily tilted toward Taiwan, the Netherlands, Italy, and the U.K. right now. Top 10 holdings are thick in U.S. stocks, but Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), Unilever (UL), Samsung, and Chugai Pharmaceutical (CHGCY) make the cut for the away team.

Manager David Eiswert and his team of global analysts home in on companies capable of generating above-average earnings growth over time.

"Many investment managers prefer a stable market environment, but this strategy’s skipper is always on the hunt for change," Morningstar's Sabban says. "Manager David Eiswert has built a great track record on the back of strong stock selection, timely trades, and the mental flexibility to pivot away from profitable trends before they sour."

Even at its worst, PRGSX still tends to top the category average. But when it shines—which it does over most medium- and long-term time frames—it's not just one of the best T. Rowe Price mutual funds you can buy, but one of the best funds period.

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T. Rowe Price Dynamic Credit Fund

• Style: Nontraditional bond
• Assets under management: $1.3 billion
• SEC yield: 6.4%*
• Expense ratio: 0.63%**, or $6.30 per year for every $1,000 invested
• Morningstar Medalist rating: Gold

Most investors will want some exposure to bonds, but how much will largely be determined by your age. Bonds have little growth potential but produce a dependable stream of income, so they're not great for generating wealth (your prime concern when you're younger), but they're outstanding for protecting wealth (increasingly pivotal as you age). That said, buying individual bonds is difficult because of a dearth of data and research on single issues; bond funds are a more practical solution for most people. 

Related: The 9 Best Schwab Funds to Buy

Many bond products must stay within certain parameters—they can only hold these kinds of bonds, they have to have this percentage of investment-grade bonds, maturities must be at least this long. But nontraditional bond funds' restraints are typically few and far between, with managers given not just a long leash on the types of bonds they can carry, but sometimes also permission to use derivatives.

Or as Morningstar beautifully puts it, “nontraditional bond funds are like the grade-school kids that liked to color outside the lines.”

But freedom doesn't necessarily mean every nontraditional bond fund will be full of exotic holdings. The Silver-rated T. Rowe Price Dynamic Credit Fund (RPIDX), for instance, is currently a little more than 50% invested in corporate bonds, with 13% of assets in collateralized debt, and less than 10% in government bonds. It also has a little bit of corporate junk (3%) and a high (21%) amount of cash reserves; the rest is scattered across varied debt types. This is also very much a "global" fund, as about a third of the portfolio is ex-U.S. in nature; nothing too out of the ordinary.

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That said, managers Kenneth Orchard and Steve Boothe have a fairly aggressive portfolio right now, from a credit perspective. Backing out the cash position, almost 70% of the debt portfolio is junk-rated, and 40% is rated B or worse. Only about 15% is investment-grade. The remainder is "not rated," which simply means they're not rated by Moody's or Standard & Poor's—it doesn't imply anything about quality one way or another. Investors with the stomach for it are earning well more than 7% for their trouble, though.

RPIDX hit the markets in January 2019, so it's not a terribly old fund. But so far, so good. It has beaten the category and Morningstar's performance benchmark index over every meaningful time period, and its returns are within the top 30% of nontraditional bond funds over the trailing-five-year period. Indeed, RPIDX isn't just a great T. Rowe mutual fund—it rates among the best bond funds you can buy.

* 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.

** 0.75% gross expense ratio is reduced with a 12-basis-point fee waiver until at least Feb. 28, 2027.

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.

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