Strong foreign acquisitions of Canadian securities continued in November as non-residents added a further $8 billion to their portfolios, again focusing on bonds.

Meanwhile, Canadian acquisitions of foreign securities reached an eight-month high of $5.8 billion, led by the largest investment in foreign bonds since March 2007.

Statistics Canada reports foreign purchases of Canadian bonds remained robust at $7.1 billion.

Investment activity was split between new bonds and acquisitions on secondary markets, with more than half in corporate bonds.

Canadian investors added $7.5 billion of foreign bonds to their holdings in November, with three quarters of the money going into U.S. government bonds.

The agency says purchases of U.S. government bonds were an unprecedented $5.7 billion in November, following significant divestments in the last two years.

Investment focused on the seven-year benchmark bond and was widespread across Canadian institutional investors.

StatsCan says these same investors also acquired U.S. corporate bonds, due to new issue activity in the maple bond market as well as non-U.S. foreign bonds, mainly bonds indexed to inflation.

Canadians, however, withdrew $1.2 billion from their holdings of foreign money market instruments in November.

Canadians removed $499 million from their holdings of foreign stocks, amounting to half of October’s divestment.

Net sales of non-U.S. foreign stocks reached a four-month high of $1.5 billion, as Canadian pension funds removed sizeable amounts of Asian equities from their holdings.

This activity was partially offset by acquisitions of U.S. stocks, as U.S. equity prices edged down 0.2% after two months of gains.