Mutual fund sales charges, also called loads, are one of the things that a Fool should never pay when purchasing a mutual fund. If you're reading this, you're certainly able to pick mutual funds that will provide better net returns than if you pay somebody else to pick them for you.
Mutual funds come in two broad categories.
Those that have a sales charge and those that do not. Those that have a sales charge are called load funds and those that do not are called no-load funds. Let us repeat that. Funds that impose no cost to purchase have outperformed those that brokers pay themselves to find for their clients. The simplest load to understand is the front-end load .