Activity Up at Nation’s Mutual Funds : Securities: Small investors flood brokers with orders. Buyers slightly outnumbered sellers Monday.

Small investors who hoped that Friday’s selloff would lead the way to higher stock prices outnumbered sellers Monday as the market mounted a mild comeback.

Calls flooded into mutual fund groups over the weekend as investors sought information and logged buy or sell orders.

Three times the normal number of callers contacted discount brokerage Charles Schwab & Co. between Friday and Monday, spokesman Tom Taggat said.

Of those adjusting their accounts through Schwab, sellers slightly outnumbered buyers during the weekend. But once the market opened Monday morning, buyers were ahead, Taggat said.

The rebound didn’t amount to a mad rush, however. The Dow Jones industrial average managed a gain of 29.52 points after its 120-point plunge on Friday, its fifth worst.

“I think buying may be up a little, but it’s not enormous,” said A. Michael Lipper, president of Lipper Analytical Securities Corp., which follows mutual funds.

Investors at Vanguard Group, sensing a buying opportunity, were generally moving their money out of low-yielding money market funds and into equity funds, spokesman John Woerth said.

That’s a continuation of a general market trend by investors weary of low interest rates on certificates of deposit and money market funds. For them, the stock market’s greater risks are worth the promise of stronger returns.

Also, investors who saw prices rebound from previous crashes may not be as quick to sell this time, observers said.

At the Financial Programs funds in Denver and Twentieth Century funds in Kansas City, Mo., spokespersons said they were on track to set records for the number of investor calls received Monday. Both fund firms said the majority of callers were buying stock funds.

But at some firms, there wasn’t a discernible pattern. Tim Pitts, head of sales and marketing at Oppenheimer Management Corp., said just as many investors were buying as selling. Calls from shareholders were up 20% to 30% on Monday, he said.

Previous crashes have been exacerbated when mutual fund investors flooded their brokerages with redemption orders. Fund managers, in turn, were forced to sell stock out of their funds’ portfolios to raise the cash demanded by individual investors.