Norwegian fund with $1.9 trillion posted its best quarter since 2023. Where did it invest?

The Norwegian sovereign fund, the largest in the world, in the second quarter showed the best result for the last one and a half years. The growth was driven by equities, especially European companies, as well as investments in infrastructure. This year, the fund continued to increase investments in technology giants, but reduced its stakes in the oil and gas sector.

Norwegian sovereign wealth fund Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) earned a return on its investments of 6.4% in the second quarter. This is the fund's best quarterly result since the end of 2023.

The main contribution came from equities, which yielded almost 8.5%, as well as investments in illiquid infrastructure (+8.1%). Bonds yielded 1.7%, while illiquid real estate yielded 1.6%.

The fund's return for the first half of the year amounted to 5.7%, which is 5 basis points below the benchmark value, on which it is oriented. The most profitable were the fund's investments in European stocks (yield of 17.8%). North American securities brought only 1.4%.

Nevertheless, the total value of assets under management of the fund fell 0.8% from the end of last year - to 19.586 trillion kroner ($1.9 trillion). This was facilitated by the strengthening of the Norwegian krone, notes Bloomberg.

The fund increased its investments in five of the ten largest stocks in its portfolio, according to its first half 2025 report. The stake in Nvidia rose from 1.31% to 1.32%, in Apple from 1.22% to 1.25%, in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing from 1.8% to 1.85%, in Tesla from 1.1% to 1.14%, and in Berkshire Hathaway from 0.49% to 0.54%.

Shares in Amazon remained flat at 1.17%.

The Norwegian Fund reduced its investments in the four remaining companies in the top-10 portfolio. Positions in Microsoft decreased - from 1.4% to 1.35%, in Alphabet - from 1.26% to 1.22%, in Meta Platforms - from 1.34% to 1.24% and in Broadcom - from 1.54% to 1.42%.

In addition, the fund reduced its stakes in oil and gas giants, Bloomberg noted. The stake in Exxon decreased from 1.46% to 1.32%, in Shell - from 2.78% to 2.55%. Positions in Chevron, BP and TotalEnergies also decreased, according to the published data.

NBIM is the world's largest wealth fund. It was established in the early 1990s and invests Norway's oil and gas revenues for the benefit of future generations. More than two-thirds of its assets are in equities, all of which are outside Norway, Bloomberg notes. The fund now owns about 1.5% of all publicly traded stocks in the world.

"It's such a market environment right now where you need to have a very broad diversification and a long-term investment horizon, because at our scale it's simply not possible to quickly rebuild a portfolio based on short-term fluctuations. More than half of our portfolio is in the U.S. and just under a third in Ma, so we're very happy with our geographic diversification at the moment," CEO Nikolai Tangen told Bloomberg.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor