Canadian investment fund assets fall in October

* Total assets were C$573 billion at the end of October

* Net sales were minus C$291.4 million in October

TORONTO, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Sliding equity markets in North America helped drive down the value of assets under management at Canadian investment funds in October, a month during which investors exited the money market and favored long-term funds.

The Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) said on Monday that total investment fund assets fell last month by 1.7 percent from September to C$573 billion ($548 billion).

That compares to total assets of C$582.7 billion in September and C$522.4 billion in October last year. At the beginning of the year, Canadian investment funds had about C$507.1 billion in assets under management.

"Several equity markets, including the major North American exchanges were down in October, which led to a month-over-month decline in total assets under management," IFIC said in a statement.

Assets in money market funds, which involve trade in short-term obligations like Treasury bills, fell in October.

"We've had people moving back into the long-term fund categories and out of money market," Dennis Yanchus, manager of statistics and research at Toronto-based IFIC said in a telephone interview.

Net sales were minus C$291.4 million in October, IFIC said, after C$2.24 billion in long-term fund sales, which include bond funds, and C$2.54 billion in money market fund redemptions.

Long-term fund sales were C$1.97 billion in September. In October last year, long-term funds had net redemptions of C$5.94 billion.

Equity funds also had net redemptions in October, with a total of C$512.2 million taken out of the market. That is still an improvement over equity fund net redemptions of some C$1.01 billion in September and redemptions of C$2.4 billion in October 2008.

"I think what we've seen in October is kind of a continuation of what we've seen all this year, which is people moving back into the market, predominantly through bond funds, so being a lot more conservative than they were before the downturn last year," Yanchus said.

($1=$1.05 Canadian) (Reporting by Pav Jordan; editing by Peter Galloway)