The world's largest sovereign fund has suffered losses for the first time in 7 years

The Norwegian State Pension Fund, the world's largest sovereign fund, reported a loss of 485 billion crowns amounted to $ 56.7 billion in 2018, according to Norges Bank Investment Management annual report.

The fund received a loss in 2011 the last time, it was amounted to 86 bn crowns. The organization had suffered maximum losses during the 2008 financial crisis. The loss was estimated at 633 billion crowns.

One of the main reasons for the current results was the fall of the crowns against many currencies in which the fund had invested before.

Øystein Olsen, chair of Norges Bank, said: “Although performance was weak in 2018, the long-term return has been good and higher than the return on the benchmark index.”

The market value of the fund at the end of 2018 amounted to 8.2 bn crowns (966 million dollars) compared to 8.4 billion crowns (993 million dollars) in 2017.

Yngve Slyngstad, NBIM’s chief executive, said: “The fund net bought equities for 185bn crowns in fourth quarter 2018. Most of this was bought in November and December.”

At the end of the year, 66.3% of the fund’s assets were securities, 30.7% were fixed-income securities, and 3% were real estate. The fund also owns shares of the largest companies around the world.

The fund, among other things, is guided by ethical principles when it chooses assets. That`s why stocks of companies from the USA, France, Israel, the DPRK, China, and others were excluded from its portfolio in different years.

One more interesting fact. The size of the fund's assets exceeded $ 1 trillion in September 2017. This achievement has made it the largest fund in the world.

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The information above cannot be considered as an investment advice and past results do not indicate future performance.

**Investors should have experience and understand the risks of losing all the initial investment