"Load" = "Commission" in the land of mutual funds.
A given fund charges, say, 5.75% as an up front load. So you buy $1,000 worth of that fund's mutual funds, and on the first day, you only have $942.50 to invest. There are then, additionally, annual fees that get stacked on top of that load (which was paid to the broker who sold you the fund, not to the people who manage it).
Investors wanted to have better clarity as to how much of their returns that load destroyed...hence the nomenclature in a "load-adjusted return."
That metric delivers two numbers: one with the load costs embedded in it, the other with the load just ignored. Why would you ignore? Like...it must be paid regardless. Because the load is paid to a different entity than to the people who run the fund. So if the fund performed well, it still might have had an overall bad return to the investor, but it was the broker who was to blame, not the fund manager.
Hopefully that broker got you nice Mavs tickets or wine or whatever. Don't do the math on how much it actually cost you.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is a Back End Load?1 Views
Finance a la shmoop... what is a back-end load? ok people there has to be a diaper
joke in here somewhere doesn't their nappies maybe okay nevermind spoil [Baby boy wearing a nappy]
sports you people are no fun.. back end load refers to the commission charged
when an owner of a mutual fund sells their mutual fund shares you know way
less jokey the back end load is structurally a different type of share
called a B-share and yes we have an opus video on the term you should check
it out so why would you choose a back-end load over a front-end load well
if you pay your commission on a thousand dollars invested to you know start out
on your mutual fund investing sojourn well you start your compounding there
within a safe 970 dollars after having paid the three
percent commission there you compound away on a lower starting nut than you [Front end load calculations]
would have had you paid your commission at the end the problem well say you held
the fund 15 years you started with a grand ie not nine seventy because
there was no commission when you became an owner of the shares of the fun you're
gonna do the B shares take the back end load and after 15 years that grant
doubled three times to become two then four then eight grand in value now you
pay a commission is it three percent still well in some funds it might be so
then you're paying three percent on eight grand or a total commission of two
hundred forty dollars instead of the thirty bucks you could have paid upfront
have you just bitten the bullet in the beginning and bought a shares [A and B share commission value]
well tons of gimmicks crawl around out there when you're buying mutual funds [Ants crawling through cracks on the floor]
hoping to get you to pay up for the brokers right? brokers got to live but
well you just got to understand what you're being sold and some of those
brokers well they have babies at home and you know they need to pamper them [man holding a diaper]
with back-end loads
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