An old joke goes, "There are two kinds of people in the world... Those
who believe that there are two kinds of people in the world and those
who don't!"

In the context of your question, there are another two kinds of people
in the world... Those who have the time and inclination to inform
themselves so that they can make their own investment decisions and
those who don't."

The former can decide upon and buy no-load funds, and the latter use a
broker or financial planner to help them decide upon and buy their
investments.

Obviously, anyone who renders service deserves compensation for the
time, effort, and expertise involved. Thus, the person who uses a sales
agent can expect to pay for the service. One common way in the mutual
fund arena is through extra expenses associated with the fund, either
through a front-end load or through higher fund expenses that are
dispensed, in part, to the agent.

Although some who have a financial incentive will argue that load funds
perform well enough compared to no-load funds to make up for the load,
I'm pretty sure that the facts do not support such a claim on average.
Thus, if you choose to make your own buy and sell decisions, you stand
to come out just as well as a professional.

Fortunately, most people start out investing a small amount of money
(although it doesn't seem like it at the time), so early mistakes while
you are learning don't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. As
the size of your portfolio grows, hopefully your knowledge will grow so
that you make better-informed decisions.

Dave

I've started looking into investing in mutual funds a couple of weeks ago,
and I have a couple of questions. First of all, what is the advantage of
investing in a loaded fund vs a no load? From what I can tell, the yearly
fees are around 1% regardless of the load/no-load. Am I missing something?

Secondly, What is the benefit of a broker? Most mutual funds can be bought
directly, why get the broker involved? Is it just for his (commission
skewed?) advice?