Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) is likely to report comfortable returns from its investments, helped by gains in domestic and overseas equities during much of the quarter. A strong showing would emphasize the resilience of GPIF’s portfolio, which is divided equally among domestic bonds, foreign bonds, domestic equities, and foreign equities.

Investment Strategy Debate

The Japanese government is debating whether the world’s largest pension fund should rethink its investment strategy. Minister of Finance Satsuki Katayama said the government aims to steer state pension funds to increase domestic asset investments as domestic bond yields rise and stocks offer stronger returns.

GPIF’s basic portfolio sets a 25% target for each of four asset classes, with permissible deviations of five to six percentage points. However, GPIF has made limited use of that flexibility, partly because its institutional evaluation places emphasis on keeping holdings and investment performance close to its benchmarks.

Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.