The Norwegian State Pension Fund, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, recorded an investment return of 6.3% in the first quarter of 2024—NOK 1.21 trillion (almost $110 billion), according to a statement from Norges Bank Investment Management, a division of the Norwegian central bank, which manages the fund.
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Fund income
This is 0.1 percentage point below the level at which the fund targets.
The Norwegian fund estimates its return relative to the benchmark index based on the FTSE Global All Cap for shares and the Bloomberg and Barclays indices for instruments with fixed income, notes Bloomberg.
The fund's return on investments in shares was 9.1%. At the same time, losses from investments in fixed income instruments amounted to 0.4%, in unquoted real estate – 0.5%, in assets in the field of renewable energy sources – 11.4%.
Investments in shares brought profit to the fund very high profits, especially at the expense of companies in the technology sector, noted Deputy CEO of the fund Trond Grande.
At the same time, NBIM noted that good returns from investments in stocks and fixed income securities suffered from weak results in the real estate sector , which led to a negative result overall.
In the first quarter, the Norwegian krone weakened against major world currencies, and this contributed to the fund's value increasing by 647 billion kroner (about $58.8 billion), the report said.
As of March 31, the value of the fund was 17.719 trillion kroner ($1.6 trillion). 72.1% of the fund's investment portfolio is in investments in stocks, 26% are investments in fixed income, 1.8% are investments in real estate, 0.1% are investments in assets in the field of renewable energy sources. The inflow of funds into the fund in the first quarter amounted to 96 billion kroner ($8.7 billion).
Global stock markets in the first quarter saw growth in all sectors except real estate, but in recent weeks they have been under constant price pressure pressure, writes Bloomberg. For example, the American stock market fell for four days in a row, which was the longest decline since January, the agency notes. The S&P 500 index at the end of trading on April 17 amounted to 5022.21 points (-0.58%). NBIM CEO Nikolai Tangen previously said that inflationary factors, from rising commodity prices to rising wages, will continue to influence the global economy.
The Norwegian Government Pension Fund is divided into two separate sovereign funds: the Government Pension Fund Global ; former Oil Fund) and Norway (Government Pension Fund – Norway; former Insurance Fund). The former owns about 1.5% of the shares of all listed companies in the world, including Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and others, according to information on the NBIM website.
