January mutual fund sales fell compared with a year ago, though net assets were up, the Investment Funds Institute of Canada estimated Tuesday.

The industry organization said sales for January totalled between $314 million and $814 million, down from January 2009 sales of $1.17 billion.

IFIC also estimates that net assets of the mutual fund industry for January were between $581 billion and $586 billion, up from $491.1 billion in January 2009.

“This January we were seeing very strong portfolio rebalancing activity out of money market funds and back into the long-term fund categories,” says Pat Dunwoody, IFIC’s vice president of member services. “This contrasts the results for the past two years and, as January tends to be the month when advisors sit down with their  clients to review their portfolios, likely highlights increasing comfort among both investors  and their advisors regarding the risk/return tradeoff in markets generally.”

Assets were down about 1.97 per cent from December’s total of $595.2 billion. Net sales for the last month of 2009 were $194 million.