Canadian mutual fund net sales just $790 million last month while ETFs accelerate

Investors continued to favour exchange-traded funds over mutual funds in September, with mutual fund net sales slowing to below $1 billion.

Newly released statistics from the Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) show that total net sales last month were $0.79 billion, down from $2.4 billion in August, as three of the major asset classes recorded net redemptions.

Balanced long-term funds saw net redemptions of almost $1.2 billion while equities were down $600 million, and money market funds lost $119 million, continuing the decline of the previous month.

However, mutual funds still posted net sales, marking positive figures for the whole of the third quarter and for five of the first nine months of 2024. September net sales were recorded by bonds with $2.3 billion (this asset class has been positive every month this year) and specialty with $396 million.

Mutual fund assets gained $40.5 billion or 1.9% month-over-month to almost $2.9 trillion.

ETFs

Meanwhile, ETFs continued to gain with net sales of $5.5 billion in September, escalating from the $4.3 billion recorded in August.

All major asset classes gained, led by equity ETFs with $2.7 billion net sales, followed by $1.5 billion for bonds, $698 million for money market funds, $372 million for balanced, and $283 million for specialty.

ETF assets gained by $14.5 billion or 3.1% over the month to $478.5 billion. Sales and market performance has driven ETF assets up by $96.5 billion, or 25.3% year to date.

This week IFIC published the results of a Pollara Insights Survey about the behaviours and views of both mutual fund and ETF investors including their use of professional financial advisors.