{"id":611480,"date":"2026-04-18T02:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T02:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/611480\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T02:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T02:28:08","slug":"canadians-moved-record-amount-foreign-assets-in-february-statcan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/611480\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadians moved record amount foreign assets in February: StatCan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Canadians moved a record amount of money into foreign assets in February, causing more money to leave the country than foreign investors brought in.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">But it\u2019s not a cause for concern yet, says one economist. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Canadian investment in foreign securities hit its highest level in nearly two years at<a href=\"https:\/\/www150.statcan.gc.ca\/n1\/daily-quotidien\/260417\/dq260417a-eng.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www150.statcan.gc.ca\/n1\/daily-quotidien\/260417\/dq260417a-eng.htm\"> $25.4 billion, according to Statistics Canada, <\/a>significantly outweighing the $6.2 billion that foreign investors put into Canadian assets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">They spent a record $32.9 billion on foreign stocks, specifically large U.S. tech firms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">While it may appear concerning, the data isn\u2019t all that bad, explains Pedro Antunes, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI think we need to take it with a grain of salt,\u201d says Antunes. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">He says international tractional data can be extremely volatile, and the investments reflect Canadian investment portfolios rather than long term investments that drive Canada\u2019s economic growth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cCertainly the U.S. tech sector has been doing very well&#8230;but it\u2019s hard to know what specifically happened in that one month.\u201d says Antunes. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">He stresses that this is a securities investment, not a greenfield investment, which would involve building new productive physical assets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cAnd of course, when we buy foreign assets, that does bring a stream of income into the country,\u201d says Antunes. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI think all this suggests is that there was something more attractive for Canadian investors than perhaps what\u2019s within Canadian markets at this point in time.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>There is still interest in Canadian bonds<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The better gauge of economic stress is the bond market and the Canadian dollar, which seem to be holding up,&#8221; says Antunes. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019re still able to sell our bonds,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cBond yields are really what sets interest rates for Canadians. So this is where I\u2019m a little comforted by the fact that there\u2019s still inflows to purchase bonds in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Foreign investment in Canadian securities slowed to $6.2 billion in February, a significant decrease from the $46.8 billion recorded in January, <a href=\"https:\/\/www150.statcan.gc.ca\/n1\/daily-quotidien\/260417\/dq260417a-eng.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www150.statcan.gc.ca\/n1\/daily-quotidien\/260417\/dq260417a-eng.htm\">according to Statistics Canada.<\/a> <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">While acquisitions of $22.6 billion in bonds continued, they were moderated by divestments of $9.2 billion in shares and $7.3 billion in money market instruments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The time to worry would be if there was a steady outflow and more capital leaving Canada, impacting bond yields and exchange rates, he says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI don\u2019t see anything here that suggests there\u2019s a pattern that all of a sudden, capital is leaving Canada,\u201d says Antunes. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI wouldn\u2019t panic over this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canadians moved a record amount of money into foreign assets in February, causing more money to leave the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-611480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}