Entry/exit fees for ETFs, do I need to care?

Question

I'm saving for my retirement, partly by buying ETFs. One of these ETFs is Amundi Msci Eastern Europe EX Russia. At the corresponding Bloomberg site, I found some information that confused me:

Front Load Fee: 3.00%

Back Load Fee: 3.00%

Redemption Fee: 3.00%

I thought that when I buy ETFs on the stock market, I only need to care about the expense ratio, which is listed as 0.2%. I sent an email to Amundi, and received the following reply:

Entry and exit charges will only apply when shares are subscribed or redeemed on the primary market. Those fees will not apply when investors trade the ETF on stock market (secondary market).

So my question is: will entry and exit fees in any way affect my return on investment when buying ETFs in the secondary market? And if not: why would anyone pay an expensive fee to buy the ETFs in the primary market if they can buy them in the secondary market without those fees?

Answer 1

The secondary market has a spread, meaning that your selling price is lower than your buying price. So effectively, on the secondary market, you pay a similar 'fee' for a buy-sell roundtrip. It might be lower, or it might be not, you need to check the spread for each ETF.
Also, the secondary market might not be as liquid as you want - you might need to wait hours or days to buy/sell your ETFs.

But generally, you are right, trading them in the market is the cheaper option, and would be preferred.