Stock investing: Stocks generally fluctuate in value more than bonds and may decline significantly over short time periods. There is a chance that stock prices overall will decline because stock markets tend to move in cycles, with periods of rising and falling prices. The value of stocks held by the fund may decline due to general weakness or volatility in the stock markets in which the fund invests or because of factors that affect a particular company or industry.

Market conditions: The value of the fund’s investments may decrease, sometimes rapidly or unexpectedly, due to factors affecting an issuer held by the fund, particular industries, or the overall securities markets. A variety of factors can increase the volatility of the fund’s holdings and markets generally, including geopolitical developments (such as trade and tariff arrangements, sanctions, and cybersecurity attacks), recessions, inflation, rapid interest rate changes, war, military conflict, acts of terrorism, natural disasters, and outbreaks of infectious illnesses or other widespread public health issues (such as the coronavirus pandemic) and related governmental and public responses. Certain events may cause instability across global markets, including reduced liquidity and disruptions in trading markets, while some events may affect certain geographic regions, countries, sectors, and industries more significantly than others. Government intervention in markets may impact interest rates, market volatility, and security pricing. These adverse developments may cause broad declines in market value due to short-term market movements or for significantly longer periods during more prolonged market downturns.

Sector exposure: Issuers in the same economic sector may be similarly affected by economic or market events, making the fund more vulnerable to unfavorable developments in that economic sector than funds that invest more broadly.

Private placements and IPOs: Investments in the stocks of privately held companies and in companies that only recently began to publicly trade, such as initial public offerings or IPOs, involve greater risks than investments in stocks of companies that have traded publicly on an exchange for extended time periods. There is significantly less information available about these companies’ business models, quality of management, earnings growth potential, and other criteria that are normally considered when evaluating the investment prospects of a company. Private placements and other restricted securities held by the fund are typically considered to be illiquid and tend to be difficult to value since there are no market prices and less overall financial information available. The adviser evaluates a variety of factors when assigning a value to these holdings, but the determination involves some degree of subjectivity and the value assigned for the fund may differ from the value assigned by other mutual funds holding the same security.

Active management: The fund’s overall investment program and holdings selected by the fund’s investment adviser may underperform the broad markets, relevant indices, or other funds with similar objectives and investment strategies.