Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund, Tokyo, said its portfolio ended the latest quarter with ¥192.1 trillion ($1.33 trillion) in assets, down 0.88%, or $11.6 billion, from the prior quarter.

In a statement posted on GPIF’s website Friday, Masataka Miyazono, the pension fund’s president, said rate hikes in the U.S. and Europe to contain inflationary pressures stoked concerns of recession, depressing stock prices at home and abroad.

But the dollar’s continued gains vs. the yen during the quarter ended Sept. 30, to ¥144.75 as of Sept. 30 from ¥135.86 three months earlier, helped cushion the impact of falling overseas stock and bond prices on GPIF’s portfolio.

For example, the U.S. currency’s 6.5% gain vs. its Japanese counterpart helped limit the decline in GPIF’s ¥47 trillion in overseas stock holdings to 0.5%, even as the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 6.7% over the three-month period.

The balance between the pension fund’s holdings of bonds and stocks, meanwhile, became a little more bond heavy. Combined exposures to domestic and overseas bonds edged up to 52.3% of the portfolio from 51.4% as of June 30. Combined holdings of domestic and overseas stocks slipped to 47.7% from 48.6%.

The fund’s holdings of alternatives — infrastructure, private equity and real estate — grew to 1.5% of the portfolio, or roughly ¥2.82 trillion, up from 1.3% at the close of the prior quarter.

Alternatives are not a distinct category but included in the tallies for GPIF’s four main asset classes of domestic and overseas stocks and bonds, depending on their characteristics.

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