New York State Common down 2.68% for fiscal year

The New York State Common Retirement Fund, Albany, posted a -2.68% return on investments for the fiscal year ended March 31.

For the quarter ended March 31, the fund returned -11.61%. The quarterly and full-year results are audited, and all return figures are net of fees.

The pension fund's assumed rate of return is 6.8%.

For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2019, the pension fund recorded a 5.23% return.

The fund had assets of $194.3 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31 vs. $210.5 billion for the year-ago period.

"Despite very solid returns through February, the coronavirus sent markets into a tailspin just as we were closing the books on our fiscal year," Thomas DiNapoli, the state comptroller and sole trustee of the pension fund, said Thursday in a news release.

"The fund has already recovered much of those losses, but volatility and uncertainty will persist until our public health crisis is resolved," said Mr. DiNapoli, who didn't provide details.

June 30 was the end of the first quarter of the current fiscal year. The April-June results will be announced in early August, Matthew Sweeney, spokesman for Mr. DiNapoli, wrote in an email.

As of March 31, the fund had 49.1% of its assets in publicly traded domestic, non-U.S. and global equities. Other allocations were to cash, bonds and mortgages (26.2%) private equity (11.2%), real estate and real assets (9.7%) and absolute return strategies and opportunistic alternatives (3.9%).

The best performing category for the just-completed fiscal year was private equity with an 11.64% return. The worst was non-U.S. equities with a -13.71% return.

Annualized returns for the three, five and 10 years ended March 31 were 4.47%, 4.96% and 7.53%, respectively.