The world's largest sovereign wealth fund posted losses of tens of billions of dollars in the first part of the year
Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world. reported a loss of 636 billion Norwegian kroner ($68.44 billion) in the first quarter of this year on Thursday, amid the impact of the Middle East war on global equity markets, Reuters reports.
Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which holds about half of its $2.2 trillion in assets in the United States, posted a negative return of 1.9 percent for the January-March period.
“The result reflects a quarter of challenging market conditions,” Trond Grande, the fund's deputy director, said in a statement.
“We saw a limited impact on fixed income and real estate, but it was the decline in equities, particularly among large US technology companies, that drove the result,” he added.
Investments of Norway's sovereign wealth fund affected by fluctuations on Wall Street
The war that began in late February, when the United States and Israel launched coordinated attacks against Iran, sent the S&P 500 stock index to its biggest quarterly decline since 2022, although markets have since recovered.
The Norwegian fund's return on equity investments was negative at -2.6%, while fixed income fell 0.2%. Other investments such as those in unlisted real estate made the total negative return just 1.9%.
The fund, which owns shares in more than 7,000 companies worldwide, had the largest holdings in Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft at the start of 2026, according to the most recently published data.
Last year, the fund reported a loss of 415 billion kroner in the first quarter amid weakness in tech stocks, highlighting that even a diversified portfolio can be affected by fluctuations in the share price of major US companies.
