• Individual Investor
Login
Login
  • 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.

Get started

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.

Now leaving ThriventFunds.com

 

You're about to visit a site that is neither owned nor operated by Thrivent Mutual Funds.

In the interest of protecting your information, we recommend you review the privacy policies at your destination site.

Continue

MUTUAL FUND FOCUS

Active & passive fund management: What’s the difference?

Financial professional meets with his clients in an office

Key points

Actively managed funds

With actively managed funds, managers decide to buy or sell securities based on their expectations for how those securities will perform.

Passively managed funds

Passively managed funds are designed to mirror the performance of an index by holding the same or similar securities in the same proportions.

Sorting through thousands of mutual funds to find the ones most appropriate for you can be a daunting challenge. Beyond the types of investments they hold, mutual funds also are categorized based on their fund manager’s investment style—active management or passive management.

In general terms, active management refers to mutual funds that are actively managed by a portfolio manager. Passive management typically refers to funds that simply mirror the composition and performance of a specific index, such as the S&P 500® Index. The S&P 500 is a market cap weighted index that represents the average performance of a group of 500 large capitalization stocks.

Investing Insights newsletter

Subscribe to receive tips to help navigate your financial journey and ideas for setting and reaching your goals.

Subscribe

Actively managed funds

With actively managed funds, managers decide to buy or sell securities based on their expectations for how those securities will perform. Typically, an actively managed fund will seek to outperform a designated index or benchmark that aligns with its investment mandate. For example, the S&P 500 Index is used as a performance benchmark for a large-cap stock fund.

How active management works

Active management takes a hands-on approach. Rather than following preset rules to build a portfolio of stocks or bonds, managers of actively managed mutual funds make buy and sell decisions, selecting individual stocks and bonds according to a rigorous methodology and thorough company research.

Why active management

  • When you invest in these funds, you’re benefiting from the years of experience across a wide range of market conditions that fund managers provide.
  • Investors who prefer funds with active management believe this more human approach provides a real financial value that passively buying the market (or a segment of the market) based on an automated model, cannot.
  • Active fund managers have a host of resources to help them track and respond to the market’s ups and downs as well as positive or negative changes to individual company’s fundamentals.
  • When you invest in an actively managed fund, you’re tapping into the collective expertise of the fund managers and their teams who understand the factors that can impact individual companies and the market as a whole.

Often, teams of analysts and experts help identify investing opportunities, make buy and sell decisions, and manage the fund daily. These teams work to maintain the right mix of investments which they believe will achieve each fund’s specific goals for performance and risk.

Decisions are supported by financial analysis and modeling tools that help forecast possible market performance. This combination of human know-how, sophisticated tools and seasoned fund managers delivers rigor and discipline that makes active management so attractive to many investors.

RELATED ARTICLES

What is a mutual fund?

Mutual funds provide access to stock and bond markets for a relatively low initial investment, and offer potential to grow your money or generate income.

4 reasons mutual funds may work for you

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

Passively managed funds

Known also as index funds—passively managed funds do not attempt to outperform a designated index. Rather, they simply seek to mirror the performance of an index by holding the same or similar securities in the same proportions. The managers only buy or sell securities as necessary to correspond with the index.

How passive management works

A typical passively managed fund might contain all stocks in a particular index like the S&P 500 index. When the S&P 500 index rises and falls, so does the passive fund, often by similar amounts. When individual stocks move in or out of the S&P 500 index, the fund buys and sells the same stocks. For passive funds that mirror indexes, this is sometimes referred to as “buying the market.”

Why passive management

  • Trades within the portfolio are automated, with little or no human decision-making involved.
  • It’s a simple and straightforward investing approach that makes these funds a popular choice for some investors.
  • Expense ratios1 of actively managed funds, which require ongoing analysis and portfolio management, are typically higher than passively managed funds.

Costs and fees of active versus passive management

Because of the different management styles, there may be differences in fees, costs and tax consequences. For managed funds, research and analysis costs money, which usually leads to actively managed funds having higher expense ratios than passively managed funds. And when measuring passive funds compared with an index, in the passive fund, buying and selling incurs management and other expenses, thus performance for these funds may vary from that of the index itself.

In addition, it’s important to view historical tax consequences of different strategies prior to making an investment. Both active and passively managed funds buy and sell assets, creating the potential for investors to incur capital gains taxes on their investments.

There’s no right or wrong answer to whether you should invest in active or passive mutual funds. Whatever you decide, make sure to do your research and consider all your options.

 


 

1 The expense ratio is the annual fee that a fund charges its shareholders and is expressed as the percentage of assets deducted each year for fund expenses, including management fees, operating costs, administrative fees, fees and all other asset-based costs incurred by the fund. Class S shares do not have any sales charges, loads or 12b-1 fees. Net Expense Ratio reflects any reimbursements or fees waived by the investment adviser, while Gross Expense Ratio reflects the expenses before any waivers.

Any indexes shown are unmanaged and do not reflect the typical costs of investing. Investors cannot invest directly in an index.

The information provided is not intended as a source for tax, legal or accounting advice. Please consult with a legal and/or tax professional for specific information regarding your individual situation.

Related Insights