[gull]

This advisor sounds like a salesperson, and not someone with your best interests in mind.

A common tactic that salespeople use is promoting funds that have done well in the past. There are two problems here. The first is survivorship bias. The only funds around today that you can invest in are the ones that have been successful and haven't been shut down. This can make it look like a family of funds is outperforming. For instance, if you look at five funds and see that they've all beaten the market over the last five years, it seems natural to assume they are outperformers. However natural though, you can't draw that judgement. The fund family may have been adding new funds every year, and only keeping the ones that outperform. While you see the five outperformers, you don't see the five funds that failed and shut down. The second problem with identifying outperformance is that salespeople imply that this outperformance will continue. Unfortunately for the fund's investors, outperformance does not persist (or if it does, only a little as a result of momentum effects). Historically, funds that did really well over a period of 10 years still didn't fare any better than the average fund.

Front loads are essentially commissions. This is why salespeople push front-loaded funds so heavily. The extra fees only hurt your returns, but they line the pockets of the seller. If your advisor had your best interests in mind, she wouldn't be pushing loaded funds. They do not outperform index funds, and they don't make the fund cheaper in the long run.

There are two surefire ways to help control your return. Asset allocation and costs. You should construct a portfolio of index funds to achieve your desired asset allocation. You should also try your hardest to reduce commissions, fees, loads, expenses, etc. Fees are the only certain component of your returns, and they are negative. 1% may not seem like much, but the power of compounding can turn a 1% expense ratio into thousands of lost dollars.