NBIM, the trillion dollar state pension fund of Norway, the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, endured the biggest loss it has ever seen in the first half of the year, according to an official statement.
According to the statement, it lost 14.4%, or $174 billion, out of an overall value of about $1.2 trillion.
The fund owns an equivalent of roughly 1.5% of every listed company on the planet, with inflows just in the first half of 2022 amounting to roughly $36.8 billion. However its size was not a shield against the currency and stock movements which stripped it of value.
Its stock portfolio took most of the damages, falling 17%, with major losses coming from investments in Meta, the parent of Facebook. Fixed income investments dropped 9.3%, and tech stock holdings overall fell 28%. Renewable energy infrastructure project investments lost 13.3%. The funds only profitable investment sector was its energy investments, which gained 13%.
The fund’s CEO Nikolai Tangen struck an optimistic note, despite the losses, saying at a press conference, “The fund is now so big that the sums become very big… But we are a long-term investor, so we have to tolerate these kinds of swings. What was unusual this time is that we lost money both in stocks and bonds.”
But Tangen did note in the short term in an interview with the Financial Times, there would be, “tough times” ahead, saying, “Markets don’t go down in a straight line, and I’m worried that we could have tough times for an extended period. There is a risk that we haven’t seen the worst yet.”
The Daily Financial Trends
