ETFs and mutual funds saw their assets under management plummet in March, according to data from the Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC).
In a month plagued by market volatility, ETF assets fell by $20 billion, down 9.5% from February. Mutual fund assets fared worse, falling by $159.9 billion, down 10% from February.
Despite their plunge in asset value, ETFs recorded net sales of $3 billion in March. Equity ETFs led the pack with $4.2 billion in net sales, followed by balanced funds, which saw $124 million in net sales. Money market funds had $31 million in net sales.
Bond ETFs had $1.2 billion in redemptions and specialty ETFs had $139 million in redemptions.
IFIC’s data is not adjusted to remove double-counting ETFs that invest in other ETFs.
Mutual funds had net redemptions of $14.1 billion in March, led by $11 billion in balanced-fund redemptions and $6.7 billion in bond-fund redemptions. The only asset classes that didn’t suffer net redemptions were money market funds, which had net sales of $4.1 billion, and specialty funds, which had net sales of $181 million.