For 25 years, Steven Halpern, editor of TheStockAdvisors.com, has surveyed the leading financial newsletter advisors asking for their favorite stocks for the coming year. This article is one of 100+ ideas in the Best Stocks for 2008 report.

"For a conservative investor who wants to incur only low to moderate risk, I would recommend a well-established mutual fund, the Fidelity Puritan Fund (NASDAQ: FPURX), as my top pick for 2008," says Leonard Goodall, CFA and editor of No-Load Portfolios.

"This is a balanced fund, with a portfolio that includes about 67% stocks, 26% in bonds and the rest mainly in cash. A major problem for most mutual fund investors is that the return they actually receive from a fund is well below the announced return on the fund.

"This is because they make bad-timing decisions. They buy the fund after it has run up in price and then sell it after it has suffered a downturn.

"The researchers at Morningstar have produced some work recently that suggests that for balanced funds the return that investors actually achieve is closer to the announced return of the fund than for most other types of funds.

"This is probably due to the fact there is less turnover among investments in balanced funds than in sector or other specialized types of funds.

"This particular balanced fund has a proven track record. Its average annualized return over five years is 10.6%; for ten years the number is 7.9%. Its stock portfolio has a heavy representation of stocks that appear to be beaten down in price, are undervalued and have a higher-than-average dividend return.

"It has only 5.6% of its portfolio invested in overseas companies. I wish that figure were a bit higher, but the number is consistent with its conservative investment approach. With an annual expense ratio of just .59% and a four-star Morningstar rating, this fund is a good choice for the conservative portion of a well balanced portfolio."