What could be more romantic and exciting than a long, lingering love affair with a rich foreigner?
Maybe a long, lingering love affair with a whole bunch of them.
Statistics Canada released its latest monthly data on international securities transactions Monday, and they showed that foreign investors have continued their infatuation with Canadian securities. Foreigners bought a net $6.7-billion of Canadian stocks, bonds and money-market instruments in February.
While it was a significant drop from the huge $11-billion-plus foreign inflows in December and January, it's still a historically strong number that reflects just how popular Canadian investments have been with overseas buyers. For those keeping count, that 13 out of 15 months that net foreign inflows have topped $5-billion - an immense run by almost any measure.
The February influx was tilted heavily toward Canadian bonds, which racked up $7.8-billion in foreign inflows. That lifts the net foreign purchases of Canadian bonds over the $100-billion mark for the past 14 months.
And as economist/strategist Stewart Hall over at HSBC Securities (Canada) Inc. reminds us, what's not to love? Canadian bonds have none of the sovereign risk surrounding other A-list bond issuers - our debt-to-GDP ratio is about half the G7 average, with no Greeces lurking in our closet - and our banking sector look like a bunch of boy scouts compared with the raft of reform-school cases littering the rest of the globe. Plus, we're the one central bank in the G7 that's on the verge of raising rates for the first time in a long time.
The global debt market has hardly been a beauty pageant over the past couple of years, but Canada at least has managed to look like the prettiest girl in the bar. As such, it will keep getting the attention from all the boys, at least until someone better walks through the door.