For investors, the mid-cap sector can get lost in the shuffle between the alluring promise of small-cap stocks and the familiar market leaders of the large-cap sector.

But the mid-cap market—which encompasses stocks in the range of about $7 billion to $35 billion in market cap—offers a world of opportunity for investors looking for long-term growth potential with a bit more stability than many of the stocks of the small-cap universe.

“The mid-cap market offers more established business models, more established management teams, and a little less risk versus small-cap stocks,” explained Brian Flanagan, senior portfolio manager of Thrivent Mid Cap Stock Fund (TMSIX). “And it typically offers better growth opportunities versus large-cap stocks.”

While the large-cap sector led the way in terms of performance during the recent bull market—particularly the technology area—Flanagan points out that “over the long-term, mid-caps have traditionally offered better growth than the large-caps.”

What’s behind Thrivent Mid Cap Stock Fund’s industry-leading performance?

Flanagan attributes much of the success of the Fund to three key factors—people, process and patience.

“Thrivent Asset Management has an outstanding investment division with experience through many different market cycles and dynamics across industries,” said Flanagan. “The Fund management team has the support of a deep fundamental and quantitative research team with an average of more than 20 years of experience.”

The team’s investment process focuses on adding value by investing in attractive companies at good valuations while controlling risk. “It begins with a quantitative screening process that identifies attractive companies that we should do fundamental research on,” added Flanagan. That research revolves around three main areas:

1. Operating performance. “We’re looking for companies that can maintain a high return on invested capital or improve return on invested capital through revenue growth, operating efficiencies and capital management.”
2. Valuation. The team determines an underlying value for each company in the portfolio through fundamental research—such as discounted cash flow analysis, free cash flow yield analysis and the comparative analysis of the stock’s relative or normalized earnings multiple to the market (depending on the sector).
3. Market sentiment. “We try to identify how our thesis on a company is different than the market’s. Some of the factors that we analyze are insider transactions and valuation spreads across the industries.”

Patience is another key element of the overall strategy and, according to Flanagan, “probably the most important piece and maybe the hardest piece.” He added: “Underlying volatility in the market can cross up your rational decisions, which is why we need to be able to have patience with our process. That’s why we’re very fortunate to have a management team, board of directors and shareholders who have the confidence in our process and our people to achieve that consistent long-term performance.”