Smith Barney already has one Aggressive growth fund with a 10 year record and two growth funds with 10 year records. According to Morningstar data there are 56 Aggressive growth funds and 473 growth funds with 3 year track records. This means a commissioned sales person could sell them and be compensated for his research effort. I'd ask your broker why a few in this group were not considered since they would demonstrate both his due diligence and the record of superior performance that would justify the expense and commission. What's surprising here is that Smith Barney sells a smaller proportion of home-brewed proprietary product than the other large wire houses.
Performance is another.
With over 7,000 mutual funds we are going to see continuing innovation and experimentation in marketing as different fund groups try to get access to reliable sources of fresh investment money. Whether you get a good return from the fund is an entirely separate matter. The offer here is a straw man. While the ARCH family of funds is generally sold with a 4.5 percent sales load, many no load mutual fund companies will allow you to set up automatic monthly investment plans through an automatic bank account debit.