Commodity assets rise $2.2 bln in Oct -Barclays

LONDON, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Assets under management in the commodity sector rose $2.2 billion in October as investors worked towards diversifying their portfolios, Barclays Capital said in a note.

Flows into commodity-linked U.S. mutual funds, a guide to the amounts invested in indices such as the Standard & Poor's commodity index .SPGSCI, totalled $1.22 billion.

Investments in exchange traded commodity products (ETPs) rose $427 million and in medium term notes (MTNs) or structured products the number was $571 million, Barclays said.

"Inflows into commodity investment products continued at a robust pace to record one of the strongest Octobers ever," the British bank said in a note dated November 4.

"A distinguishing feature of the recent data flow has been the waning interest in commodity ETPs and the growing interest in commodity indices."

Barclays said flows into mutual funds so far this year have topped $8.2 billion, almost double the previous record in 2005

"Year-to-date ETPs have seen much stronger inflows of $27.4 billion, but almost $18 billion of this came in Q1 through record inflows in physically-backed gold ETPs and rising interest in oil ETPs," Barclays said.

"Since then, flows have eased, especially in oil ETPs, which have registered an average outflow of about $590mn since March this year."

Barclays in October said commodity assets under management in the third quarter totalled $224 billion. [ID:nL9549069]

(Reporting by Pratima Desai; editing by Keiron Henderson)