Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, Oslo, returned 3% in the second quarter on positive equity returns in a volatile quarter, helping to push the sovereign wealth fund's assets to 9.16 trillion Norwegian kroner ($1.01 trillion).
The return equated to a 256 billion kroner gain for the quarter, an update Wednesday from the world's largest sovereign wealth fund showed. It gained 5.2% for the year ended June 30.
The annualized net return for the five years ended June 30 was 6.2%, while the 10-year period showed 8.8%.
The update showed that equities, which accounted for 69.3% of the fund's allocation, returned 3% for the quarter, compared with 12.2% in the previous quarter and 2.7% for the year-earlier quarter.
The biggest gain was from North American stocks, which returned 3.6%. U.S. stocks, the sovereign wealth fund's single largest market allocation at 39.6%, also gained 3.6%. European stocks returned 4.1%; U.K. equities added 0.9%; and Asia and Oceania equities returned a combined -0.1%.
The sovereign wealth fund's 28% fixed-income allocation added 3.1% for the quarter vs. a 2.9% gain for the previous quarter and flat results for the second quarter of 2018.
The fund's 2.7% unlisted real estate allocation returned 0.8% for the quarter, compared with 1.7% in the previous quarter and 1.9% in the year-earlier period.
"We had a positive return on our fixed-income investments thanks to falling yields," Trond Grande, deputy CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, which runs the fund's assets.
"We now have more than 600 billion kroner in bonds with negative yields. That is equivalent to a quarter of our fixed-income portfolio and in line with the markets," Mr. Grande said. "Uncertainty about global trade and economic growth dampened returns early on, but markets rallied towards the end of the period, driven partly by the prospect of more expansionary monetary policy in developed markets."
