Whether the sales charge, or load, is up front when you buy into the fund, at the end when you sell the fund, or is an as-you-go 12b-1 charge included in the expense ratio, it will cost you. Loads go to sales organizations and sales personnel; they are not used to secure better portfolio managers, better research or better anything. A load reduces your return dollar for dollar. So if you are not getting financial advice worth the load, buying a loaded fund will cost you, perhaps dearly. Load funds do not outperform, on average, similar objective funds with no loads; in fact, they tend to underperform by the amount of the load. How could they, given what loads are used for? Want to invest with a hot manager in a fund that is loaded? Given the iffiness of historical performance as a predictor of future performance, find a no-load fund with a similar style, performance and risk, and save the load charge.
Don't forget that almost all fund performance data is reported without adjusting for front-end or back-end loads. However, performance data does adjust for the 12b-1 charge because it is included in the expense ratio, and fund performance net of the expense ratio is accounted for in performance statistics.
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