New stats show 2025 investment fund net sales are well ahead of a year ago
Canadian investment funds have started 2025 strongly with both mutual funds and ETFs around $10 billion ahead of 2024 after two months of sales.
Stats from IFIC reveal mutual fund net sales of $9.0 billion in February, the highest they have been since February 2022, three times higher than in January, and marking eight consecutive months of positive sales.
Investors favoured the more conservative asset classes with bonds ($3.1 billion), money market ($2.1 billion), and balanced ($1.5 billion) accounting for most of the net sales, although specialty funds were also positive at $2.4 billion.
These stats show a strong rebound for balanced funds following net redemptions of $388 million in January, and a surge for money market funds (from $852 million) and speciality ($1.4 billion) in January.
Equity funds remained in negative territory with net redemptions of $197 million, although this was an improvement from the $2.1 billion net redemption in January.
Mutual fund assets totalled $2.310 trillion at the end of February, down by $1.2 billion or 0.1 per cent since January.
ETF net sales were also strong at $9.9 billion, up $900 million from January.
Bond, equity, and money market saw the largest month-over-month gains, but all major asset classes were positive in February.
Equity ETF net sales were $4 billion (down from $4.8 billion in January), bond funds recorded net sales of $3 billion (up from $1.7 billion), money market net sales were $1.2 billion (up from $831 million). Balanced funds were in line with the previous month ($750 million vs. $745 million) while specialty lost some ground with $753 million (down from $831 million).
ETF assets totalled $547.1 billion at the end of February, up by $5.8 billion or 1.1 per cent since January.
