Nearly $910M of mutual funds redeemed in November

A Toronto floor trader reacts to a market shift during one of many slumps this fall.(Chris Young/Canadian Press)

Canadian mutual-fund investors continued to pull money out of the market in November, the Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) reported Monday.

But the net withdrawal of $909.8 million was far below that of October, when investors redeemed $8.4 billion worth of mutual funds.

Net sales are still positive for the first 11 months of 2008 at $1.26 billion, but far below the $32.04 billion in sales in the comparable period in 2007.

"All the broad asset classes were in net redemption territory in November, though redemptions slowed substantially from October," IFIC said.

Investors redeemed long-term funds totalling $2.63 billion in November, but short-term fund sales of $1.45 billion cut the final decline to $909.8 million. In October, both long-term and short-term funds were redeemed.

Assets under management totalled $552.1 billion at the end of November, down 3.4 per cent from $571.3 billion in October and down 20.7 per cent from $696.2 billon in November 2007.

During November, Toronto's benchmark S&P/TSX composite index fell about 450 points to 9,270.