Fund companies posted positive net sales in July. The Investment Funds Institute of Canada reported Monday that net sales for the month were $321 million.

“Net sales for the month of July were $321 million, compared with net redemptions of $1.1 billion from the same period, one year ago. Sales were fueled by positive flows of $463 million into long-term funds. Also, year-to-date redemptions have decreased by $4.6 billion from the same period in the previous year,” said Tom Hockin, IFIC’s president and CEO.

Net sales for all funds including re-invested distributions were $580 million.

The flows indicate that investors are still cautious about their long-term investments. The strongest asset class was dividend and income funds, which managed to garner $398.6 million in monthly net sales. Another $329 million flowed into bond funds, and $104 million went into balanced funds.

However, net sales were restrained by ongoing redemptions from the pure equity asset classes. About $221.4 million flowed out of foreign equity funds, another $200.8 million came out of Canadian equity funds, and a modest $12.5 million was dropped from U.S. equity funds. Low yields saw $141.2 million flow out of money market funds.

“Assets in the industry grew 3.2% from the previous month and 0.7% from the same time in the previous year to $403.2 billion. This is the first month the industry has had a year-over-year increase in assets since June 2002,” Hockin noted.

Looking at fund companies’ assets, there were a handful of winners among the big firms. AIM Trimark saw assets jump 4.5% in the month, Franklin Templeton managed a 6.3% gain. The banks generally saw lower-than-market asset gains, reflecting their greater proportion of money market assets. Scotia was weakest, with just a 1% gain in the month.

A few of the smaller firms enjoyed big gains, including a whopping 13.1% jump at Brandes. There were also outsize asset gains for small firms such as Mawer, Synergy, and Standard Life.

IFIC also reported the total number of member unitholder accounts at 51.4 million, a 2.8% decrease over one year ago.