Latest industry report shows waning investor appetite across nearly all categories
The Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) has released its latest monthly report, which showed an August sales slowdown that was worse for ETFs than for mutual funds.
For mutual funds, balanced funds saw net sales of $616 million in August, an improvement over $203 million in July. Bond funds also saw a pickup in net sales, from $2.57 billion in net sales in July to $2.86 billion last month.
However, over the same period, equity mutual fund flows deteriorated sharply from $87 million in net redemptions to $662 million in redemptions. Specialty funds’ net sales slipped from $526 million to $495 million, and money market funds reversed course from taking in $154 million in July to shedding $433 million last month.
While flows for ETFs in August remained consistently positive across all categories, IFIC’s figures showed a significant month-on-month drop in inflows.
While balanced funds saw a modest pickup from July’s $90 million in net sales to $115 million in net sales last month, that’s where the good news ended.
Over the same period, equity fund net sales were halved from $2.29 billion to $1.18 billion, while bond ETF net sales declined by roughly two thirds from $3.3 billion to $1.2 billion. Specialty funds, meanwhile, saw net sales dip from $261 million to $180 million. Money market ETFs slowed from a torrent of $423 million in July to a mere $14 million in August.
Looking at net assets, mutual funds still dwarfed ETFs. Net assets for mutual funds stood at $1.67 trillion as of August, compared to just $236 billion for ETFs.
