Mutual fund companies managed just $544 million in net sales for July, while industry assets dipped, according to the latest numbers from the Investment Funds Institute of Canada.

IFIC reported that net sales for all funds including re-invested distributions were $813 million. Net sales for long-term funds were $792 million. “This puts long-term-fund sales for the first seven months of 2004 at $13.9 billion, the highest for sales in the same period since 2000,” said Tom Hockin, IFIC’s president and CEO. “Investors continue to focus on balanced, bond and dividend & income funds.”

Indeed, it appears investors remain nervous about the state of equity markets, as they continue to favour conservative asset classes, and shun straight equity funds. The dividend and income category led the way in July with $369.7 million in net sales. Balanced funds followed closely with $331 million. Bond funds produced another $219.6 million in net sales.

On the negative side, Canadian equity funds suffered $194.9 million in net redemptions, while foreign funds posted $59.5 million in net redemptions, too. Among the pure equity categories, only the U.S. equity funds scored positive net sales – putting up $61 million in sales.

More important for fund companies, industry assets also slipped 1.3% in the month to $470 billion from $476.1 billion in June. Still, assets are up 16.6% from the $403.2 billion mark they sat at in July 2003.

The smaller firms appeared to do the best job of avoiding the market slides that took overall assets down in July. Among the top 10 firms, only BMO recorded a gain in assets, up 0.3%. Standard Life was one of the top performers in the month, enjoying a 2.2% asset gain. It was joined by solid gains in Guardian, Northwest, Mawer, Acuity, Saxon, Brandes and National Bank.

Several of the industry’s largest firms saw substantial drops in assets, led by a 3.4% slide for AGF. Fidelity and Franklin Templeton were both down 2.6%, and AIC and MD Management were each down 2.5%. AIM Trimark dropped 2.2%.

IFIC also reported the total number of unitholder accounts at 51.1 million, a 0.5% decrease over one year ago.