World's Biggest Pension Fund Adds $39 Billion as Stocks Rise
World's Biggest Pension Fund Gains $39 Billion as Stocks Climb
(Bloomberg) -- The world’s biggest pension fund posted its fifth-straight quarterly gain, the longest run in more than two years, as global stocks advanced to new highs and weakness in the yen helped boost the value of overseas investments.
Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund returned 3 percent, or 4.5 trillion yen ($39 billion), in the three months ended Sept. 30, increasing assets to a record 156.8 trillion yen, it said in Tokyo on Thursday. Domestic equities added 1.8 trillion yen as the value of foreign equities increased by 2 trillion yen, particularly boosted by the euro’s strength.
Prospects for higher corporate earnings have driven the Topix index to levels unseen in more than a decade, while U.S. stock benchmarks climbed to records on confidence the world’s largest economy will sustain its growth. GPIF’s string of gains follows a series of losses after it overhauled its strategy in 2014 to buy more shares and cut debt.
“Their investment itself is going well, and going forward I don’t expect a lot of movement from them that would impact the market” said Koichi Kurose, Tokyo-based chief market strategist at Resona Bank Ltd. “Japanese stocks have been rising so there’s a possibility GPIF will sell to balance their portfolio, but right now I’m not hearing a lot of speculation on that.”
The fund’s Japanese stocks returned 4.8 percent over the three months, above the Topix’s rise of almost 4 percent. Overseas stocks added 5.6 percent, helped by a 3.4 percent drop in the yen against the euro, as well as weakness versus the greenback, increasing the value of foreign holdings when repatriated. The MSCI All-Country World Index of global stocks climbed 4.7 percent last quarter.
“At GPIF we manage assets from a long-term perspective,” GPIF President Norihiro Takahashi said in a statement Thursday.
The fund’s domestic bond holdings, which accounted for 28.5 percent of total assets, posted a 0.2 percent gain. Foreign bonds added 2.5 percent, making up 14 percent of GPIF’s investments at the end of September.
Japanese stocks accounted for 24 percent of holdings, while overseas equities were 24 percent of assets. The target levels for GPIF’s portfolio are 35 percent for domestic debt, 15 percent for foreign bonds, and 25 percent each for domestic and overseas shares. The percentage allocations for foreign bonds, overseas stocks and short-term assets were all at record highs.
Alternative assets accounted for 0.1 percent of GPIF holdings, below the allowable limit of 5 percent. The fund has also invested around 1 trillion yen into indexes that track Japanese stocks with high environmental, social and corporate governance scores. GPIF announced Wednesday that it plans to consider investing in environmental indexes covering Japanese and foreign stocks.
“On ESG, GPIF is taking the lead, trying to create benchmarks for others,” said Resona’s Kurose. “I see others following that lead.”
--With assistance from Kurt Schussler
To contact the reporters on this story: Yuko Takeo in Tokyo at ytakeo2@bloomberg.net, Keiko Ujikane in Tokyo at kujikane@bloomberg.net, Shigeki Nozawa in Tokyo at snozawa1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Vivek Shankar at vshankar3@bloomberg.net, Naoto Hosoda, Tom Redmond
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