Japan’s Pension Fund Warns of Global Investing Losses
Global markets have become so synchronized that money managers risk losing on every front, according to Hiromichi Mizuno, chief investment officer of the world’s largest pension fund.
Japan’s $1.5 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund lost money in equities, fixed-income and currency positions in the last three months of 2018, Mizuno pointed out on Tuesday in Sacramento, California.
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“Conventional wisdom of portfolio diversification is when we lose money in equity we make a profit in fixed income,” Mizuno told the board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. pension.
“But we lost in every single asset classes and lost in the currency translation as well. It never happened in the past.” The Japan system’s annualized returns were 3.03% from fiscal 2001 to 2018, compared with a more than 6% annual average for Calpers, which has an annual target of 7%. More than half of GPIF’s portfolio was in domestic stocks and bonds as of March 31.
Many Japanese bonds carry negative yields, while the country’s stocks have been falling since a high in January 2018.
Read more @Bloomberg
