Net Individual Savings Accounts [ISAs] fund sales also suffered, registering a 62% decrease with net sales of £235.8m compared with £617m in September 2000. Although under normal circumstances there would be a seasonal increase in net sales from August to September in any given year, in August 2001 total net sales were £806.8m while net ISA sales were £332.5m.
Even taking into account the dramatic effect of the terrorist activity in the US, September’s poor sales figures mark the persistence of a downward trend in recent months. As the stockmarkets have fallen the sales of investment funds have nose-dived with them. The summer months are normally slow for investment fund sales but this summer was much slower than that of 2000.
On a positive note investors appear to be staying in the stockmarket as illustrated by lower repurchase volumes, both in terms of recent months and this time last year. Repurchase volumes refer to the number of a fund’s units that fund managers must buy back from investors who wish to sell.
The UK All Companies sector was the most popular with both retail and institutional groups with net sales of £82.2m and £163.7m respectively. The AUTIF categories with the worst net sales during September were Europe Excluding UK for the retail market and UK Smaller Companies for the institutional one.
