Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Wow! Calpers Recoups $95 Billion Recession Loss




Holy Toledo!  The California Public Employees’ Retirement System is poised to top a record $260 billion in assets, the market value it held before the global financial crisis wiped out more than a third of its wealth, by sticking with a strategy of buy-and-hold.

The largest U.S. public pension, with half of its money in publicly traded equities, was worth $253.2 billion on Jan. 17, or about 97 percent of the pre-recession high set in October 2007. The fund returned 13 percent in 2012, about the same gain as the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index achieved.

“A lot of the improvements in portfolio returns is simply reflective of the return of the market,” Chief Investment Officer Joe Dear said in an interview. “But there is still an important lesson there, which is that when the crisis was full on, we didn’t drastically reduce our equity exposure.”


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