Overall sales mutual fund for January tumbled to just $460.5 million, down from $4 billion last year, according to the Investment Funds Institute of Canada.

All of the sales came in money market funds, whose sales reached $4.8 billion, up $2.3 billion from December. Most of this went into the Canadian Money Market category.

Long-term funds were in net redemptions for the month. Equity funds, both domestic and foreign, had net redemptions of $3.1 billion, compared with $487 million net redemptions in December and $1.1 billion net sales last January, IFIC said. It noted that Canadian focused equity funds had the highest net redemptions at $1.5 billion.

Fund-of-fund sales appeared to be in net redemption territory in January, but these redemption figures were due to a number of fund mergers that were completed for some third party fund-of-funds, IFIC said. Correcting for this merger, actual fund-of-fund sales came in at $341 million for January. This was down sharply from the $2.3 billion in fund-of-fund inflows last January.

Despite the very weak month, the 12-month total for net sales was $31.4 billion, higher than the same 12-month period one year earlier ($22.9 billion).

Total industry assets also fell in January, dropping $25.7 billion to $671.6 billion. A combination of both $4.3 billion in net redemptions and negative market effect from long-term funds contributed to this result, IFIC reported.

“We continue to see strength primarily in money market fund sales as capital markets remain unsettled,” said Pat Dunwoody, IFIC’s vp, member services & communications. “Highly diversified and customized target date portfolios had sales of $165 million and were the investment of choice for investors taking a longer view.”

RBC Asset Management dominated the sales charts in January, with more than $1.7 billion in overall net sales (all of it due to its money market sales). Desjardins had $530 million in net sales, and TD Asset Management recorded almost $400 million in net sales.

Dynamic Mutual Funds had $264 million in net sales, and was the only firm among the top 10 to record positive net sales in its long-term funds. However, Desjardins was the leader with $521 million in long-term sales. Many firms suffered net redemptions on the long-term side. Hardest hit was AIM Trimark, with $817 million in long-term redemptions.