The Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) revised its monthly sales data for August to the upside on Tuesday, after a couple of companies were left out of the initial calculations.
On Monday, IFIC announced that mutual fund net sales for August were just over $800 million. Today, it revised its monthly sales estimates to $939.6 million.
The revised monthly sales totals are still down sharply from July when overall sales were more than $2 billion; and, they are down from the $2.3 billion recorded in August 2012.
IFIC reports overall industry sales data based on both numbers reported to it directly, and data provided to, or estimated by, industry research firm, Investor Economics Inc. It says that a company or two were left out of the latter’s calculations, leading to today’s data revision.
As a result, IFIC’s estimates for long-term fund net sales were also revised higher, up to $1.04 billion for August from $929.1 million in the initial publication. Also, money market fund net redemptions were revised lower, down to $102.6 million from an initial estimate of $121.9 million.
By sector, the big revision to the numbers came in the equity category. IFIC now says that equity funds had net sales of $558.9 million in the month, up from its initial estimate of $473.2 million. Still, this is down from $927 million in July net sales.
The other categories were only revised slightly. Balanced funds are still the leading asset class in August, with monthly net sales of $1.66 billion, which is down from almost $2.5 billion in July.
And, bond funds recorded $1.40 billion in monthly net redemptions, up from $1.29 billion in redemptions in July.
The trade association also revised industry asset totals higher, reporting that total mutual fund assets under management (AUM) finished the month at $926.0 billion, up from its initial estimate of $919.8 billion.
This is now up from July when assets totalled $924.4 billion; although the increase is just 0.2%. And, assets are now reported up by 14.1% over the past 12 months.