Actual front-end sales load incurred by mutual fund investors in the U.S. 1990-2016

The actual front-end sales loads are the average fees that investors actually paid. They equal to the total front-end sales loads that funds collected divided by the total maximum loads that the funds could have collected based on their new sales that year. This ratio is then multiplied by each fund’s maximum sales load. The resulting value is then averaged (simple average) across all funds.
Data exclude mutual funds available as investment choices in variable annuities and mutual funds that invest primarily in other mutual funds.