Touchstone's Mid Cap Growth Fund (Class A shares, load waived) beat the Russell Midcap Growth Index in the second quarter of 2026, according to the fund's quarterly commentary. On the surface, that sounds like news. A fund beating its index is what you pay an active manager to do.

But one quarter is noise. I've been reading fund commentaries for roughly four decades, and the pattern never changes: every manager who beats the index for a quarter writes about it at length, and every manager who lags explains how the environment was "challenging." Nobody publishes a letter that says "we got lucky."

Mid-cap growth is an interesting corner of the market, though, and worth a moment. Mid caps are big enough to have real earnings and seasoned management, small enough that the giant institutional research machines haven't already picked them over. Historically that's been a decent neighborhood. The problem, as always, is that most active funds in it don't beat their index over long stretches, and the ones that do are hard to spot in advance. A strong Q2 in 2026 tells you almost nothing about Q2 in 2031.

If you own this fund or are considering it, the questions I'd ask are boring ones. What's the expense ratio, and how does it compare to a mid-cap growth index fund charging a tenth of that? What's the ten-year record after fees, not the one-quarter one? And did the manager hold the same stocks through the rough quarters, or does the strategy drift whenever performance slips? Drift is the quiet killer of active funds.

One good quarter deserves a polite nod. It doesn't deserve your money until the longer record backs it up. Patience and consistency, same as always.

The usual disclaimer: I'm sharing perspective, not professional financial advice. Read the commentary yourself, then read the prospectus twice.