The Investment Funds Institute of Canada released its monthly fund statistics for August this week. It found mutual fund sales dropped off considerably in August 2019, declining to $576-million in net sales for the month, down from the $2.5-billion in sales mutual funds recorded in July.

Exchange traded fund sales, on the other hand, far outstripped mutual fund sales. ETF assets increased by $2.2-billion to reach $186-billion in August 2019 up 1.2 per cent from the $183.8-billion reported in July.

Mutual fund sales were largely held back by net redemptions of $1.8-billion worth of equity funds and $171-million in net redemptions in the balanced fund category. All told mutual fund assets totaled $1.57-trillion at the end of August, an increase of $1.3-billion or 0.1% compared to July 2019 numbers.