26.01.202313:10 Forex Analysis & Reviews: Gold continues to attract new investors

The gold market continues to attract the attention of new investors.

After a bad year for equity and bond markets, one Swiss pension fund is looking to diversify its holdings.

Publica, one of Switzerland's largest pension funds, with $44 billion in assets under management, said it was increasing its stake in real assets such as real estate and precious metals as it expects inflation to remain high over the next decade.

In an interview with Top1000Funds.com, Publica's head of asset management, Stefan Beiner, said the fund will increase its share of gold to 1%.

The fund is also adding new risks to private infrastructure equity.

In 2023, the fund will reduce its bond liabilities by 14% and increase its equity liabilities by 5%.

The new strategic asset allocation comes after the fund posted a 9.6% net loss last year, mainly due to falling stock and bond prices.

The report said that in 2022, bonds had the largest adverse effect. With a total return of approximately -12%, they made a negative contribution of -6.3 percentage points to a consolidated total return of -9.6%.

The fund had several highlights in 2022. The pension fund said its real estate portfolio saw a positive return of 3.9%, with foreign real estate investment up 14% on a currency hedging basis.

Last year, Publica had several precious metals in its portfolio, and the fund reported a return of 0.6%.

While the pension fund said it sees long-term potential in its new strategic asset allocation, Beiner warned that the short-term outlook is challenging.

The shift in Publica's asset allocation came as the traditional 60/40 portfolio weighting had the worst annual performance since the 1930s.

Inflation, hitting its highest level in 40 years, forced central banks, led by the Federal Reserve, to aggressively raise interest rates, pushing up bond yields and crashing stock markets. Meanwhile, despite a 20-year high for the U.S. dollar, gold has outperformed both bond and equity markets. In 2022, gold was the second best performing asset after the U.S. dollar.