Statistics last month show changing trends in fixed-income strategies and continued leadership of equity ETFs
The Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) has released net sales and net assets for investment funds in January, showing that mutual fund flows continued to outpace ETFs.
Looking at net sales, mutual funds saw a total of $7.2 billion in inflows last month, a $6.2 billion increase from December 2021 and a $4.4 billion drop from January 2021.
Balanced long-term funds accounted for the most flows in January with net sales of $3.0 billion, nearly double their net sales of $1.55 billion in December. Equity funds took second place last month with $2.9 billion in net inflows, a nearly sevenfold increase from $422 million the previous month.
Bond mutual funds, meanwhile, experienced $349 million in inflows last month. That marked a dramatic improvement from December, when the category saw $1.4 billion in net redemptions.
ETFs saw $5.1 billion in overall net sales last month, in comparison to $5.6 billion in December 2021 and $4 billion in January 2021.
Bond ETFs suffered $150 million in redemptions in January, a sharp reversal compared to December when they took in $1.2 billion. Equity ETFs continued to lead with $4.7 billion in sales, accelerating from $3.3 billion in December.
At the end of January 2022, mutual fund assets totaled $2.021 trillion. When compared to December 2021, assets declined by $55.3 billion, or 2.7%.
Meanwhile, ETFs ended January with $342.5 billion in assets. In comparison to December 2021, assets declined by $4.6 billion, or 1.3%.
