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Three ways to buy 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.

Buy 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 buying Thrivent mutual funds & ETFs.

Buy 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.

Buy 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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MUTUAL FUND FOCUS

Why are dividends and capital gains in mutual funds important?

09/12/2023

Having share prices go up in value is not the only way to make money on your investment.

09/12/2023

We’ve all heard the stories—a friend gets a hot tip and buys stock in a small company, times the purchase perfectly, and it goes up in value three-fold over the next several years.

While it makes for good drama (and perhaps some mild envy), a portion of the gains achieved by mutual fund investors come from a less exciting source—recurring distributions. These provide current income to an investor and are made up of dividends and capital gains. So even if the shares don’t appreciate greatly in value, they can still be profitable.

What are dividends?

For a publicly traded company, a dividend is a cash payment to all investors who hold shares of stock in the company. These cash payments are typically a fixed amount per share and are issued at regular intervals (often quarterly).

When talking about dividends, they are often referred to as the yield or percentage relative to the stock price. Here’s an example:

$100                  Stock price

$5 per share     Annual dividend

5%                    Dividend yield ($5 ÷ $100)

Let’s say that the price dropped, but the dividend remained at $5 per share—dividends often remain constant and are changed only by a decision of the board of directors. The dividend as a percentage of the stock price would increase:

$90                    Stock price

$5 per share     Annual dividend

5.5%                 Dividend yield ($5 ÷ $90)

Companies that pay higher dividends are typically from more conservative, lower growth industries such as utilities, financial services and real estate. Younger, faster growing companies—like those in the technology sector—frequently choose to keep their cash and reinvest it to accelerate the growth of their business rather than returning the cash to shareholders in the form of dividends.

To compare, if you invest in a bond, you’ll receive interest payments instead of dividends from the bond issuers. “Issuers” are typically corporations, municipalities—like cities and towns—or state and federal governments that use bonds to finance operations and projects. The issuer pays interest to bondholders based on a percentage of the face value or principal of the bond. 

The term “coupon rate” typically refers to the annual interest rate stated on the bond. For example, if a $1,000 bond has a 5% coupon rate, the bond issuer would pay the bondholders $50 (or 5%) of the face value of the bond each year until the bond reaches maturity.

Putting dividends to work in your mutual funds

When you invest in a mutual fund, the fund may own a wide array of stocks and bonds that may pay dividends and interest. The mutual fund consolidates all the dividends and interest and periodically pays it out to you, the mutual fund investor—although there is no guarantee that dividends will be paid in any year. Dividends may be paid monthly, quarterly or annually, and the amount paid each time may vary depending on the fund and its underlying investments.

As a mutual fund shareholder, you can choose how dividend distributions are handled. You may choose to have them paid to you in cash (this may be helpful to supplement retirement income) or you could elect to reinvest them. Reinvesting dividends increases the number of shares you own without investing any additional cash. With a Thrivent Mutual Funds account, you can set this up to happen automatically.

Without dividend reinvestment, the only way for your account balance to grow would be to make additional purchases into it, or if the price of the stocks and bonds held in the fund increases.

Capturing returns with capital gain distributions

Mutual funds regularly buy and sell securities in their portfolios based on the decisions their portfolio managers and analysts make to meet fund objectives. This activity can result in capital gains (and sometimes losses). The gains are then passed along to mutual fund shareholders in the form of capital gain distributions.

Mutual funds are required to pay out any capital gains the portfolio has realized each year to its shareholders. Like dividends, capital gain distributions can be made in cash or reinvested into your account.

The rest of the story

While increasing share prices can be exciting, they are only part of the story. To get a complete picture of how well a mutual fund is performing, investors need to look at both the potential for growth as well as income.

That’s why learning how stock and bond mutual funds distribute dividends and how they can boost your potential earnings is a crucial step to becoming a more informed, confident and successful investor.

How are dividends and capital gains taxed?

When mutual fund shares are held in a taxable account (not an IRA, Coverdell ESA or similar tax-advantaged account), any dividends or capital gains that are paid out become taxable to the shareholder and are treated as if the shareholder owned the underlying security directly. So, dividend distributions from a mutual fund are taxable to you as ordinary income and capital gain distributions are usually taxable as capital gains.

The only exception to this would be if you owned the fund in a traditional or Roth IRA or other tax-deferred type of account and are reinvesting the dividends and capital gains so you do not have a tax impact in the year they are reinvested. (Learn more about the difference between an IRA and Roth IRA.)

These types of funds may invest in municipal securities that are subject to state and local taxes and/or the alternative minimum tax (AMT). While the dividends earned on a municipal bond fund are usually federally tax-exempt, any capital gains distributions, as well as realized capital gains from selling fund shares, may be taxable.

Also, if you own a municipal bond fund, you may avoid taxes on dividends because the dividends are typically free from federal and sometimes state income tax.

As always, be sure to consult with your tax professional for more detailed information on the tax treatment of dividends and capital gains in taxable and tax-deferred accounts. For more information, visit the Dividends & distributions tax FAQs page.

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