The mutual fund industry weathered another month of negative net sales in May. The Investment Funds Institute of Canada reported Monday that, May net sales, excluding re-invested distributions of $256 million, totaled minus $637 million.

Net sales for all funds including re-invested distributions were minus $380 million.

IFIC stressed that while overall net sales are still negative, long-term sales are modestly positive. “For the past two months, assets in long-term funds increased a total of almost 7% and all long-term fund categories had positive increases,” said Tom Hockin, IFIC president and CEO. “Total redemptions in the industry for the first five months of this year decreased by 15% from the same period one year ago.”

In the month, long-term funds managed net sales of $168.9 million. Almost all of this came in the dividend funds and bond funds, reflecting investors cautious approach to asset allocation. The bond funds enjoyed $298.3 million in net sales during the month. And, the dividend funds added another $256.4 million.

Against this, Canadian equity funds experienced $231.3 million in net redemptions. Foreign equity funds also had net redemptions of $169.6 million. Among the pure equity funds, only U.S. equities managed small, positive net sales.

The real weakness came in money market funds, as low interest rates pushed investors to redeem $743 million in domestic money funds, and another $62.5 million from foreign funds.

IFIC also reported that total assets under management increased in May to $387.7 billion, up 2.0% from $380.2 billion in April. Assets are still down 10.6% from last May’s figure of $433.6 billion.

Strong asset gains came at firms such as Franklin Templeton, CI, Dynamic, Manulife, Brandes, Mawer, Standard Life and Guardian. With their heavier concentration in money market funds, the bank-owned firms generally fared worse than the industry overall.

Also, the total number of member unitholder accounts came in at 51.5 million, a 2.6% decrease over one year ago.