Individual mutual funds often come with multiple classes of stock. These relate to different fee structures.
It's kind of like how everyone on an airplane paid a slightly different amount to be there, even if they're sitting right next to each other. Some bought tickets way early, and got a cheap fare that way. Others saved the checked-luggage fee by carrying all their bags onto the plane (and then spent 10 minutes pounding on a too-large suitcase until it squeezed into the overhead bin). Still others might have gotten onboard using frequent flier miles...and didn't cough up any cash at all. Different fares, same flight.
For mutual funds, everyone in a single fund has the same underlying investments. The fund holds whatever assets it holds. The different classes of stock (A, B, C, etc.) denote different fee structures. Some clients paid a front-loaded fee...others chose to go with something back-loaded (a choice also popular on Brazilian beaches).
T shares are something a little different. They combine some of the aspects of other share classes to create a hybrid offering. They're meant to have low costs (so-called "low-loads"). The exact structure of the T share differs from fund to fund. But the share class provides a mix of fee types. It's like a "little from column A, little from column B" situation.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is Capital Appreciation (M...10411 Views
Finance a la shmoop what is capital appreciation as in the sense of an
investment fund or a mutual fund you know that is like what does it mean to
have a mutual fund with a focus on capital appreciation all right people
think more, more assets all right you have capital and yes you [Woman with a vault full of money]
appreciate having that capital but you'd appreciate it more if there was more of
it like it appreciated so a capital appreciation fund is one which focuses
on just growing the assets bigger and bigger don't really care how the capital
gets grown don't necessarily need dividends don't necessarily need minimum
p/e ratios don't necessarily need balance sheet covenants on the
investments you make don't care if it's exposed to the Venezuelan oil companies [Venezuela city landscape]
or the Australian dollar in a cap app fund well you just want the dough to [Money falls into flower pot]
grow and this ethos is in contrast to other flavors of funds which for example
need to throw off cash in the form of dividends like in a growth and income
fund or interest like in a bond fund like you know it's cash people need to
live on right so those have to do a capital appreciation does not so what's
a typical investment in a capital appreciation fund well usually be
something like a mega trend tech stock that just grows or appreciates with time [Man typing on laptop]
and really doesn't throw off much if any of a dividend like Amazon, Netflix
Facebook, Google those guys so think of a capital appreciation fund is the body [Man wearing underpants in a locker room]
builder of the mutual fund world it just wants to grow everywhere
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