Here you can view the quarterly report for Q3, 2018, it concludes with a write up called The Total Price of Ownership. Owning shares of a mutual fund come with a cost. Some mutual fund companies charge you a “load” or a commission to purchase or sell their mutual fund, while all mutual funds have operating costs and manager compensation baked into the price of the fund. This baked in cost is known as the expense ratio; an expense ratio of .50% means a cost of $500 (paid by you, the investor) is baked into an investment of $100,000, for example.

Loads are unnecessary and can be easily avoided so we choose to only use mutual funds that are “no-load” funds. Expense ratios can’t be avoided, so we make sure to use mutual funds with smaller expense ratios, because the less you pay to invest the more you make. Keep in mind, as the article points out, expense ratios aren’t the end all be all when making fund selections and they don’t always tell the whole story when it comes to the cost of owning a fund. You can give the article a read for a more detailed dive into the total price of fund ownership.