New York State Common Retirement Fund, Albany, returned -4.13% for the three months ended Sept. 30, the second quarter of the pension fund’s fiscal year.
The pension fund had estimated assets of $173.5 billion as of Sept. 30, down 4.9% from June 30, when it recorded a 0.52% return. All quarterly return figures and asset figures are unaudited.
“Volatility in the late summer continued to seriously challenge investors across multiple markets,” said state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the sole trustee, in a news release Tuesday. “While we’ve seen some recovery in the third quarter, there is no question that this is a tough year for investors.”
The news release didn’t provide details about which asset classes performed well and which ones harmed overall performance.
“While we provide a quarterly estimate of the overall performance and value of the fund, we do not provide quarterly returns by asset class,” Jennifer Freeman, a spokeswoman for Mr. DiNapoli, wrote in an e-mail. ”The decline is attributed mainly to the whole equity market, but we have seen some rebound in the third quarter.”
The pension fund’s asset allocation is 37.1% domestic equity, 20% bonds and mortgages, 15.1% international equity, 7.9% private equity, 6.8% real estate, 4.9% Treasury inflation-protected securities, 3.7% absolute-return strategies, 3.4% cash, and 1.1% opportunistic alternatives and real assets.