While mutual funds keep bleeding assets and producing outflows, exchange-traded funds so far seem to be dodging a declining economy's bullets.

But in the latest numbers compiled for January, signs are starting to show up that ETFs could be heading down a slippery slope.

The amount of money under management by the industry fell even more in January, negatively impacted by an 8.57% drop in the S&P 500 during the month. Net assets in ETFs slipped about $34 million from December 2008 to $500.5 billion, while ETNs were basically flat at $4.2 billion, according to data compiled by the National Stock Exchange.

Asset totals, however, are very general gauges of an industry's health and wealth. They include both returns, which were largely negative on the month, and net flow activities. As a result, it's difficult to tell yet whether exchange-traded products are facing more dire conditions.

At least from a big picture view, ETFs as a whole seem to be weathering the ongoing credit crunch and economic storm relatively well.

In January, investors kept pouring money into ETFs and exchange-traded notes as net inflows, which measure the difference between creations and redemptions, reached $2.1 billion.

That represented a 74% gain from a year earlier on the 861 ETFs and ETNs listed through last month. (For complete listings of NSX data, see the tables below.)

And those flow totals from January marked a continuation of the pattern set last year when ETFs attracted record net inflow of $178.4 billion, up 20% more than in 2007. (See related story here.)

Trend Reversal 

But some notable exceptions showed up last month. Both Barclays Global Investors and State Street Global Advisors, the industry's 800-pound gorillas, had net outflow of a combined $5.3 billion in January. That reversed a trend from last year where each posted strong positive inflows.

Some other key players also recorded net outflow in Janauary, most prominently Rydex, although it lost a relatively small $247 million.

By contrast, ProFunds was the month's top performer. Its ProShares ETF family is Rydex's big rival among inverse/leveraged funds. As a group, ProShares attracted nearly $3.6 billion in January, almost single-handedly lifting the entire field to net inflows.

The new leveraged provider on the block, Direxion, had another big month. Its net inflow of $1.3 billion was the month's third-best performance behind Vanguard's $1.7 billion total.

A breakdown of the types of ETFs producing inflows during January reinforces the outperformance by ETFs giving investors the ability to go short or add leverage in a highly volatile market.

Among long-only funds, U.S. stock-focused ETFs had net outflow of $9.6 billion. Global and international funds also fell into the red, but by less than $1 billion. While currency ETFs and ETNs saw slight outflows in the month, fixed-income and commodities recorded positive net inflows.

Still, long-only funds wound up with net outflows of $2.8 billion. As a comparison, long leveraged funds had net inflow of $3.2 billion and short ETFs attracted some $1.8 billion inflows in January.

So last month, money flows moved strongly toward bonds and inverse/leveraged funds—and away from long stock positions, both in U.S.-listed ETFs investing in markets domestically and internationally.

You can find the performance list of individual ETF winners and losers in the tables below.

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