OTTAWA — Precious metals and fixed-income mutual funds fared best in August as investors sought refuge against a deluge of weak economic indicators, Morningstar Canada said in a monthly report Thursday.

Gains in gold and silver drove Morningstar’s precious metals equity funds to a 14.4% increase, delivering the top gains for August, the investment research firm said.

Meanwhile, investors wary of worsening economic conditions continued to pile into bonds and other fixed-income funds.

“Investors appeared to turn their attention back to broader macro issues toward the end of the month once individual companies had announced their earnings,” said Nick Dedes, a fund analyst for Morningstar Canada.

“Second-quarter economic growth cooled to levels well below the Bank of Canada’s 3% annualized forecast. And U.S. data has offered little encouragement, with weak housing figures and private-sector job cuts.”

Despite low yields, government bonds continued to attract investors in August, driving yields even lower and bond prices up.

As a result, the Canadian inflation-protected fixed income and the Canadian long-term fixed income fund indexes gained 3.1% in August. It was their best one-month performance in more than a year. The fund indexes that track the Canadian fixed-income and global fixed-income categories also did well, each gaining 1.7%.

Overall, 11 of the 24 equity fund indexes monitored by Morningstar had positive returns in the month. Still, the results are down from July, when mutual funds posted their best returns of the year and all but two of the 43 Canadian fund indexes tracked by Morningstar advanced.

Financial services funds delivered the worst results of the month, a loss of 4.7%.

“Canadian banks released mixed third-quarter results, as generally lower trading revenues faced off against lower loan loss provisions,” Mr. Dedes said.

“The domestic insurers were a major drag on the sector. In particular, Manulife Financial faced a staggering 27 % decline in its stock price, in a month where it reported a second-quarter loss of $2.4 billion and saw its credit rating downgraded.”

Performance of fund indexes (change August from July):

Precious-metals equity +14.4%

Real-estate equity +3.8%

Cdn. inflation-protected fixed income +3.1%

Canadian long-term fixed income +3.1%

Asia Pacific equity +2.6%

Canadian income-trust equity +2.4%

Asia Pacific ex-Japan equity +2.4%

Canadian fixed income +1.7%

Global fixed income +1.7%

Health-care equity +1.5%

Natural-resources equity +1.5%

2020+ target-date portfolio +1.4%

Greater China equity +1.4%

2015 target-date portfolio +1.3%

Global fixed-income balanced +1.3%

2020 target-date portfolio +1.2%

High-yield fixed income +1.1%

Canadian equity +1.1%

Canadian fixed-income balanced +1.0%

Canadian short-term fixed income +1.0%

Canadian neutral balanced +0.9%

Global neutral balanced +0.8%

2010 target-date portfolio +0.8%

Tactical balanced +0.7%

Canadian small/mid-cap equity +0.5%

Emerging-markets equity +0.4%

Canadian money market 0.0%

Canadian synthetic money market 0.0%

Global equity balanced 0.0%

U.S. money market 0.0%

Canadian dividend & income equity -0.2%

Canadian equity balanced -0.4%

Global equity -0.4%

Cdn focused small/mid-map equity -0.5%

International equity -0.6%

European equity -0.6%

Global small/mid-cap equity -0.6%

Canadian focused equity -1.2%

North American equity -2.1%

U.S. Equity -2.4%

Japanese Equity -2.8%

Science & technology equity -3.2%

U.S. small/mid-cap equity -3.8%

Financial services equity -4.7%

Source: Morningstar Canada