• Individual Investor
  • Individual Investor

Three ways to invest in Thrivent funds

We’re here to help you invest with confidence.

MUTUAL FUNDS

Thrivent Account

You can purchase mutual funds right on our site with an online account.

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Invest with a Thrivent account

  • Set up an account starting with as little as $50 per month.1
  • Access your online account at your convenience.
  • Purchase funds without transaction fees or sales charges.

MUTUAL FUNDS & ETFS

Financial Professional

For guidance when investing, ask a financial professional about investing in Thrivent mutual funds & ETFs.

Contact a Thrivent advisor

Invest with a financial professional

  • Receive investment help from an experienced professional.
  • Build a relationship through in-person meetings.
  • Get help planning for life’s goals such as saving and retirement.
  • Additional fees may apply.

MUTUAL FUNDS & ETFS

Brokerage Account

If you already have a brokerage account, our mutual funds & ETFs can be purchased through online brokerage platforms by searching for Thrivent Mutual Funds and ETFs.

Invest with a brokerage account

  • Add Thrivent Mutual Funds and ETFs to your investments within your existing portfolio.
  • Take advantage of your account to keep your investments in one place.
  • Additional fees may apply.
Not quite ready?

We want you to invest your money wisely and with confidence.
Here are some other options that may help you.

  • Take our quiz to determine your personal investment style.
  • Talk to your financial advisor about ETFs.
  • Sign up for our monthly investing insights newsletter.

 

Need more help?

If you need assistance, we’re here to help. Reach out to us via the phone, email, and support page information below.

 

This ETF is different from traditional ETFs. Traditional ETFs tell the public what assets they hold each day. This ETF will not. This may create additional risks for your investment. For example:

 - You may have to pay more money to trade the ETF’s shares. This ETF will provide less information to traders, who tend to charge more for trades when they have less information.

 - The price you pay to buy ETF shares on an exchange may not match the value of the ETF’s portfolio. The same is true when you sell shares. These price differences may be greater for this ETF compared to other ETFs because it provides less information to traders.

 - These additional risks may be even greater in bad or uncertain market conditions.

 - The ETF will publish on its website each day a “Proxy Portfolio” designed to help trading in shares of the ETF. While the Proxy Portfolio includes some of the ETF’s holdings, it is not the ETF’s actual portfolio.

The differences between this ETF and other ETFs may also have advantages. By keeping certain information about the ETF secret, this ETF may face less risk that other traders can predict or copy its investment strategy. This may improve the ETF’s performance. If other traders are able to copy or predict the ETF’s investment strategy, however, this may hurt the ETF’s performance. For additional information regarding the unique attributes and risks of the ETF, see the Principal Risks section of the prospectus.

1 New accounts with a minimum investment amount of $50 are offered through the Thrivent Mutual Funds "automatic purchase plan." Otherwise, the minimum initial investment requirement is $2,000 for non-retirement accounts and $1,000 for IRA or tax-deferred accounts, minimum subsequent investment requirement is $50 for all account types. Account minimums for other options vary.

Thrivent ETFs may be purchased through your financial professional or brokerage platforms.

Contact your financial professional or brokerage firm to understand minimum investment amounts when purchasing a Thrivent ETF.

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INVESTING ESSENTIALS

Style drift: Are your mutual funds true to their name?

Young woman seated at kitchen table looking at her investments on a laptop

Key points

Balanced diversification

Mutual funds are good investment strategies to help balance out an overall portfolio.

Adjusting asset allocations

When style drift happens in a mutual fund, it can throw a balanced portfolio off-kilter in both asset allocation and risk tolerance.

In the fashion industry, style is expected to change frequently. For mutual funds, the exact opposite is true. Mutual funds are set up with investment strategies, and as an investor, you may use those investment strategies to balance out your portfolio. But what happens when a fund drifts away from its original strategy? This is called style drift.

In building a portfolio, each mutual fund you select represents a piece in the asset allocation puzzle that together should provide the best opportunity to meet your long-term investment objectives. 

Collectively, these pieces determine how the portfolio may perform from both a return and a risk perspective over time. Mutual funds that stay true to their investment strategies help form the foundation of asset allocation success. But funds can shift, which can play havoc with the strategy of your portfolio. If portfolio managers succumb to style drift, those funds have the potential to derail your asset allocation.

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About style drift

Style drift can occur in many ways. For example, a small-cap fund may drift into the mid-cap space if a portfolio manager continues investing in winning companies that grow out of the small-cap space as a result of their success.

Drift can also be intentional when certain investment types fall out of favor and the portfolio manager chases other investments to try to capture better returns. Sometimes this involves moving the portfolio into a higher level of cash, or in the fixed income world, exposing the fund to more risk by investing the fund more into lower quality credit to try to capture better returns.

The industry has many “go anywhere” mutual funds that aren’t bound by a specific investing style. The portfolio managers of these funds are free to invest in areas they feel are attractive at the moment, which means their risk characteristics may float from large-cap growth to large-cap blend to potentially large-cap value, for example.

It is important to not assume that just because a fund is categorized today as a large-cap value fund that it will always provide that type of investment exposure in the future. When considering funds for a portfolio, don’t just rely solely on fund names or stated investment styles. Also make a note to check if the funds drift over time, altering your portfolio diversification.

RELATED ARTICLES

Mutual funds for every objective

Mutual funds come in a wide variety of styles to meet the varying needs of investors.

4 reasons mutual funds may work for you

Mutual funds may provide investors with opportunities to diversify a portfolio with less investment cost.

Style drift leads to asset allocation shifts

No matter the cause of a mutual fund’s style drift, the fact is that it may expose your portfolio to unwanted and potentially significant consequences if the overall asset allocation you established changes. With style drift, asset allocation is now out of your control. As a result, your portfolio could have inadequate diversification or unintended overlap among its holdings, leaving you potentially under or overexposed to certain asset classes.

For example, you may have allocated 20% of the portfolio to large-cap growth and another 20% to large-cap value. In our example, the large-cap growth portfolio manager believes the economy is slowing down, diminishing the prospects for growth stocks, and begins shifting the allocation to more value-oriented stocks.

As a result, your portfolio may suddenly have 25% invested in large-cap value and only 15% in large-cap growth stocks, which no longer meets your long-term allocation objectives.

Another example where style drift may affect your portfolio is reflected in your risk tolerance. It’s harder to keep your portfolio risk levels within specific parameters if the investments in the mutual funds shift outside of the specified investment strategy. If your funds begin investing more heavily in riskier securities, the overall risk level in your portfolio increases. And if your funds shift toward less risky securities, you may see a result in lower overall rate of return from what you expected.

While funds that drift may perform well in a vacuum, they may not be fulfilling the purpose you had for them as one component of your diversified portfolio, either in terms of their holdings or risk levels.

It may be difficult to stay on top of a mutual fund’s true exposures because most fund families publicly report their holdings with a 30- to 90-day lag. But once you become aware of a fund that appears to drive regularly in and out of its investment strategy, it’s probably time to look for a different fund to fulfill that specific niche within your portfolio’s asset allocation.

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