Investors flocked towards balanced and fixed income mutual funds in 2009, and are likely to continue to do so this year, according to research from the Investment Funds Institute of Canada.

In a conference call highlighting mutual fund trends of the past year, Dennis Yanchus, manager of statistics and research at IFIC, said mutual fund sales rebounded in 2009. Although net sales of long-term funds were slow at the beginning of the year, sales picked up substantially in the latter half of the year, hitting $2.9 billion in November and $2.5 billion in December.

Long‐term fund net sales for the year totalled $17.4 billion, up sharply from net redemptions of $14.1 billion in 2008.

“2009 was basically the year that mutual fund investors got back into the market albeit in a more cautious manner than they had been before the downturn,” said Yanchus.

The strongest category of funds in 2009 was fixed income, which pulled in $12.6 billion in net sales – the highest level on record – up from net redemptions of $1.8 billion in 2008.

Within the category, global and high yield fixed income funds exhibited the strongest sales early in the year, while domestic fixed income funds gained momentum in the latter half of the year, peaking at sales of $1.42 billion in September.

Another very popular category in 2009 was balanced funds, which saw net sales of $11.2 billion for the year, up from net redemptions of $1.1 billion in 2008.

This category’s strength is being driven by the popularity of fund-of-fund products, according to Yanchus. Net sales of fund-of-fund products outpaced net sales of stand‐alone fund products in every month of 2009, and totaled $8.33 billion for the year, compared to sales of $2.85 billion for stand-alone balanced funds.

The annual net sales of balanced funds remain well below levels leading up to the downturn – which reached $21.1 billion in 2007 – but Yanchus said strengthening sales at the end of the year indicate stronger sales of balanced funds are likely in 2010.

“Due to the trends that we saw before the downturn, which was a large amount of fund-of-fund sales activity among investors, we expect that that would pick up again in 2010,” he said.

Investors remained hesitant about equities in 2009. Net redemptions of equity funds totaled $6 billion, displaying an improvement from the $12.2 billion in redemptions in 2008, but failing to move into positive net sales territory.

Still, many investors managed to benefit from the stock market rally thanks to their holdings of balanced funds, Yanchus pointed out. IFIC estimates that balanced fund managers purchased $1.6 billion in Canadian equities, $3.9 billion in U.S. equities and $3.9 billion in international equities in 2009.

“Investors were taking advantage of the upswing in 2009, but more in an indirect way,” said Yanchus.

Meanwhile, sales of money market funds plummeted in 2009. After net sales in the first three months of the year, falling yields on money market instruments drove investors away from these types of funds, pushing sales into net redemption territory.

For the year, net redemptions were $16 billion, representing a sharp reversal from 2008, when net sales totaled $14.3 billion.

“What we’ve seen over the latter half of this year is people selling out of money market funds and essentially moving back either into long-term fund categories, or into alternatives to money market funds, such as high interest savings accounts,” said Yanchus.

In the year ahead, Yanchus expects to see some of the same mutual fund trends continue. “Most likely, we’re going to see the same trends prevail as in 2009, which is the focus on fixed income, balanced funds and fund-of-funds,” he said.

In addition, with equity fund redemptions on a downward trend, Yanchus said the equity fund category may move into positive net sales territory in 2010.