(News Bulletin 247) – Norway’s sovereign wealth fund posted a positive return for the first six months of 2024, supported by the rebound in US technology stocks. The country’s future generation kitty reached more than 1.5 trillion euros at the end of June.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, gained 1.475 trillion crowns (125 billion euros) in the first half of the year, driven by its investments in technology, the Norwegian central bank, which manages it, announced this week.

This performance represents a return of 8.6% and has helped to raise the value of the fund to the pharaonic sum of 17,745 billion crowns (1,510 billion euros) as of June 30, 2024.

“The result was mainly driven by technology stocks, due to increased demand for new solutions in the field of artificial intelligence,” its chief, Nicolai Tangen, said in a statement.

Equity investments, which represent 72% of the portfolio, gained 12.5%, driven by the technology, financial and health sectors. Its bond investments (26.1% of assets) lost 0.6% over the first six months of the year.

The world’s largest individual investor

Real estate investments gained 1.5% over the same period and those, still very marginal, in unlisted renewable energy projects fell 18%.

The oil fund, as it is commonly known because it is funded by the revenues that the Norwegian state derives from the exploitation of hydrocarbons, is the largest individual investor in the world: with shares in nearly 9,000 companies, it holds on average 1.5% of all listed groups on the planet.

Established in the early 1990s, the fund is supposed to finance future spending by Norway’s generous welfare state.

(With AFP)