Paul Martin's Business Update - June 17th, 2014

Paul Martin's Business Update - June 17th, 2014

One of the lesser-known by-products of a lower Canadian dollar is how it affects the view of global investors. It turns out, they love us right now.

In April alone, $10 billion flowed into this country from foreign investors who bought things such as stocks and bonds. That is roughly four dollars flowing into the country for every dollar we invested securities aboard. The inflow of $10 billion was the highest we had seen in a year and accounts for roughly two-thirds of all the international investment in Canada so far this year, suggesting perhaps the global community thinks we have something going right in this nation and our stock market continues its bullish performance.

Roughly one-third of capital arriving in the month was directed towards stocks in Canadian corporations. Another 5 billion went into corporate bonds while government bonds were being sold off in roughly the same amounts.

On the other side of the equation we were also sellers of bonds and buyers of equities or stocks in foreign companies as the market finds stocks more attractive than debt instruments.