AI Analysis: International investment position, foreign portfolio investment in Canadian bonds and Canadian money market instruments, by geographic region, monthly

Executive Summary

Foreign portfolio investment in Canadian bonds and money market instruments has grown dramatically over 35 years, rising from modest levels in 1991 to peak holdings exceeding $2.39 trillion CAD by February 2026, reflecting sustained and growing international demand for Canadian fixed-income securities. The dataset, spanning 9,128 records across 7 geographic regions, reveals a highly skewed distribution where a small number of large investment positions — particularly in Canadian bonds — dominate the totals. Canadian bonds consistently dwarf money market instrument holdings across all regions, with investment flows showing strong positive correlations globally, suggesting synchronized international appetite for Canadian debt securities.

Key Findings

• Foreign portfolio investment in Canadian securities reached a maximum of approximately $2.39 trillion CAD, with the dataset spanning 422 monthly observations from January 1991 to February 2026.
• The distribution is strongly right-skewed: the mean value of $146,595M is more than 4x the median of $34,785M, driven by a small number of very large investment positions concentrated in aggregate 'All Countries' categories.
• The standard deviation of $312,811M — more than twice the mean — confirms extreme variability in investment values across geographic regions, instrument types, and time periods.
• The bottom 25% of all investment values fall below $4,403M while the top 25% exceed $114,620M, producing a wide interquartile range of $110,217M that reflects the vast disparity between regional investment scales.
• Canadian bonds dominate foreign portfolio investment relative to money market instruments across all 7 geographic regions, with the two instrument types showing positive correlation globally, indicating synchronized international fixed-income investment behavior.
• No IQR-based statistical outliers were detected in Canadian bond holdings for All Countries (Book Value) across 844 records, confirming a gradual and structurally consistent long-term upward trend rather than isolated spikes.
• The United States, United Kingdom, and Other EU countries rank among the top geographic regions by average investment value, while individual regions show markedly lower holdings compared to the 'All Countries' aggregate, which dominates median and mean comparisons.