Load-Adjusted Return

"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.