I really, really get the feeling when hearing the complaints that the critics have never run $800 billion dollars.
(duh, no one has except this fund)
I did however like this illustration by Brett Ryder for The Economist in one of the articles looking into the critiques:
From Bloomberg:
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, warned that stock market gains may reverse as Europe’s biggest equity investor said it won’t use new inflows to buy more shares.There are a few funds, Scottish Widows being another, that you just expect to be conservative, and as far as I can tell the Viking loot is in good hands with one of our favorite economists, Elroy Dimson of the LBS and Cambridge, advising the funds as Chairman of the Strategy Council.
“Our share in the stock market has been stable or falling even though markets are rising, and that means in practice that we’re not using inflows to buy stocks,” Yngve Slyngstad, chief executive officer of Norges Bank Investment Management, said at a press conference today in Oslo. The fund is preparing for a “correction” in stock prices, he said.
The warning follows a surge in stock values that added 7.6 percent to the fund’s equity portfolio last quarter. The $810 billion Government Pension Fund Global, the official name, returned 5 percent in the third quarter, representing a 228 billion kroner ($39 billion) gain, it said today. Bond investments climbed 0.3 percent and real estate holdings returned 4.1 percent, it said.
“Stock market returns in the third quarter where driven mainly by continued economic recovery in developed markets,” Slyngstad said. “The negative trend in emerging markets continued into the quarter, but high economy activity in China led to a rebound toward the end of the period.”...MORE
