Approximately 81% of institutional pooled funds in the Morningstar Canada database had negative returns during the fourth quarter of 2008, Morningstar Research Inc. reported Friday.

All but six of the 572 equity funds tracked by Morningstar had negative returns.

Seventeen of the 23 equity-based pooled fund categories posted median losses greater than 10%. The Canadian equity category, which contains 138 pooled funds, posted a median loss of 22.1%, while the median return among the Canadian focused equity category’s 36 funds was a 17.6% loss. Foreign equity funds fared somewhat better than their domestic counterparts; the emerging markets equity, European equity, U.S. equity and global equity categories had median losses of 17.9%, 11.6%, 10.4% and 9.3%, respectively. The Japanese equity category had the best median return among sector-diversified equity categories with a 4.6% loss.

The natural resources equity pooled fund category had the worst median return among all categories with a 26.3% loss for the quarter. Second worst was the Canadian small/mid cap equity category with a 22.2% loss. The only category to post a positive median return, and third-best overall, was precious metals equity, which contains only one fund; it gained 4.3%.

Overall, six of the 41 pooled fund categories had positive median returns in the fourth quarter of 2008. The best-performing group was Canadian long term fixed income with a median return of 4.6%, followed by global fixed income, up 4.4%. Canadian fixed income was fourth with a median return of 3.5%, while Canadian short term fixed income was up 2.5%. Two of the six fixed-income categories produced negative median returns: Canadian inflation protected fixed income and high yield fixed income had median losses of 0.5% and 3.1%, respectively.

Among individual funds, many of the top performers for the quarter belonged to the global fixed income category. The best return was the 29.6% gain posted by SEI Enhanced Global Bond, followed by United Global fixed Income Pool (28.4%) and TD Emerald Global Government Bond Index (26.2%).

Of the 1,032 pooled funds tracked by Morningstar, 199 posted positive returns for the quarter, including 41 money-market funds and 128 fixed-income funds.

Among equity funds, the best performer by far was Burgundy Asian with a 21.5% gain, followed by Goodman Precious Metals Equity, up 4.3%. At the bottom, RBC Private O’Shaughnessy U.S. Growth Equity Pooled lost 39.9%.