Although some funds have no subscription fee, if you look at the prospectus carefully, there is an additional clause called "sales service fee" in these bond funds without subscription fee. In the prospectus of Huaxia Bond, it is written as follows: "The A/B fund share of the Fund does not charge the sales service fee, and the annual sales service fee of the C fund share is 0.3%. The sales service fee of the Fund will be used exclusively for the sales of the Fund and the services of fund share holders. " In other words, although Huaxia Bond Class C does not charge front-end or back-end subscription fees, it charges sales service fees. This sales service fee is similar to the management fee, which is drawn on a daily basis. If we look at the performance of Huaxia A/B and C funds since 2007, we can find that the return of Huaxia Bond C lags behind A/B by 0.35 percentage points. This result is mainly caused by the sales service fee. So are other bond funds. Except for the sales service fee of ICBC Strong Bond Class B, the sales service fee of several other bond funds without subscription fee is 0.3%.
Nothing for nothing. If you don't charge a one-time subscription fee, you will charge a daily sales service fee, but this does not mean that there is no difference. Take Huaxia bonds A, B and C as examples. Because there is no subscription fee, although there is a sales fee for Class C, the sales fee of 0.3% after three years is less than 1%, which is lower than the front-end subscription fee (asset appreciation is not considered for the time being). We can think of it this way: if you are sure it is a short-term investment, for example, the investment period is below 1~2 years, then you can choose class C bonds, which is not cost-effective for more than 2 years; If it is determined to be more than 3 years, you can choose Class B, because the charge for Class B of Huaxia Bond is only 0.7% after 2 to 3 years, and the longer the time, the less; If there is no judgment on the investment period, you can consider Class A front-end charges. For Huaxia Class A bonds, holding for more than 3 years is superior to Class C bonds, and holding for less than 1 year is superior to Class B bonds.
In addition, it should be noted that although bond funds without subscription fees do not have the same trading fees as money funds, bond funds still fluctuate. Although their volatility is smaller than that of equity funds, there is also the possibility of losses. So this is fundamentally different from the money fund.