Meanwhile, equity ETFs maintained their popularity among investors, according to latest monthly statistics
With inflation fears and the prospect of rising rates coming into focus, mutual fund investors overall appeared quick to halt their allocations into bond funds last month, based on the latest statistics from the Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC).
Net sales of bond funds steeply decelerated from $2.5 billion in February to $151 million in March. Balanced funds maintained their strong sales position with net sales totalling $8.987 billion last month, compared to $8.745 billion in the month prior. Meanwhile, equity funds saw a slowdown in inflows as net sales dipped from $6.490 billion to $4.539 billion.
Overall, net sales of mutual funds totalled $13 billion last month.
“Mutual fund assets totalled $1.85 trillion at the end of March 2021,” IFIC said. That was off a month-on-month increase of $35.1 billion, or 1.9% compared to February.
Balanced funds ended the month with $908.4 billion in net assets. Equity funds held $639.6 billion, while bond fund assets totalled $250.8 billion.
Specialty funds, meanwhile, saw a deceleration in net sales from $779 million in February to $392 million in March. Over that period, assets also shrivelled from $36 billion to $16.7 billion.
Looking at ETFs, IFIC found sales of equity funds continued to dominate with $3.107 billion in net inflows in March, though that was somewhat weaker than the $3.471 billion in ETF sales reported in February. Bond ETFs attracted $949 million, while balanced funds took in $413 million in net inflows.
By the end of last month, Canadian ETF assets stood at $278 billion, according to IFIC’s calculations, with assets increasing $8.7 billion or 3.2% compared to February.
