IFIC data shows that new sales fueled growth for both fund types
Canadian investment funds enjoyed a positive month of sales in October with both mutual funds and ETFs improving on their previous month totals.
New data from the Investment Funds Institute of Canada show that mutual funds more than tripled their September net sales total ($1 billion) to $3.6 billion, with bonds accounting for most of the gains with $3.1 billion. Investors favoured global and high yield fixed income funds while in Canadian fixed income investments approximately half were short-term bond funds.
Equity mutual funds saw $29 million in net redemptions and balanced funds recorded $224 million net redemptions, but the two other asset classes posted net sales - $679 million for specialty and $62 million for money market funds.
Canadian mutual fund assets grew 0.2% or $3.3 billion to a total of almost $2.2 trillion with the monthly gains mostly attributed to new sales. It was the sixth consecutive monthly increase for mutual fund assets.
ETFs
Meanwhile, Canadian ETFs also improved on their September net sales of $5.5 billion with $8.2 billion in October.
That puts last month in the top three for monthly sales in 2024 so far and the second highest ever.
As with mutuals, there was a strong showing for bonds with net sales of $2.7 billion, but it was equity ETFs that accounted for the lion’s share of net sales with $4.4 billion. All asset classes were positive with $591 million for balanced funds, $327 million for specialty, and $87 million for money markets.
Total assets were $486.8 billion at the end of October, up 1.7% or $8.3 billion month-over-month and as with mutual funds this was almost entirely due to new sales.
The role of active management in Canada’s leading position in the ETF space is examined in a new report from Bloomberg Intelligence.
