Foreigners sold U.S. Treasury bonds and notes for a third straight month in May, but bought a record amount of stocks, data from the U.S. Treasury Department revealed.

Foreign outflows from the U.S. Treasury market totaled $27.7 billion in May, compared with outflows of $176.5 billion the previous month. In April, Treasuries saw a record outflow of $299 billion.

At the same time, however, foreign investors purchased $79.7 billion of U.S. equities in May, an all-time high. In April, foreigners sold $8.6 billion in stocks, the Treasury data reported.

U.S. corporate bonds saw an inflow for a third consecutive month of $13.6 billion, from an inflow of $10.94 billion the previous month, the New York Times reported.

"If you look at the transactions data, there was a pro-risk pivot in May," said Jon Hill, interest rates strategist at BMO Capital in New York. "There was net selling of Treasuries, and a decline in agency buying, but net buying of corporate bonds and equities. It seems like some of the foreign private investors helped push that rally in May as the Federal Reserve's liquidity programs were kicking in," he added.

Data also showed that Japan remained the largest non-U.S. largest holder of Treasuries during the month, although its holdings declined to $1.26 trillion in May, from $1.266 trillion in April.

China's holdings of Treasuries, however, rose to $1.08 trillion in May, from $1.07 trillion in April. The country is the second largest non-U.S. holder of U.S. government debt.

Overall, foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries rose by about $80 billion in May to $6.86 trillion, after hitting an all-time peak of $7.066 trillion in March.

Meanwhile, Scott Minerd, global chief investment officer at Guggenheim Investments, said he’s reluctantly bullish on U.S. stocks in the near term because of “artificial” government support -- even with valuations at late-1990s levels.

“My bet is that monetary policy will remain loose enough to continue to drive risk assets higher,” Minerd said in an interview Wednesday on Bloomberg Television. “For people who are looking to maximize returns, the best thing is probably to remain long at this point.”

The S&P 500 index is trading at about 25 times estimated 2020 earnings, similar to multiples seen before the tech bubble burst in 2000. Minerd said his firm’s analysis shows that share prices for the biggest companies -- including Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. -- are being driven largely by changes in their corporate-bond yields.

This report uses material from Reuters.