CPPIB gets ‘significant uplift’ from global equity markets in latest quarter

TORONTO — The head of the country’s biggest public pension fund says it benefited from “a significant uplift” from global stock markets during its most recent quarter and will be looking for buying opportunities if a recent retreat results in better pricing.

Mark Machin, CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, said the CPP Fund achieved “solid” returns during the first quarter of its 2017-18 financial year.

The fund earned 1.8 per cent, net of all costs, for the three-month period.

But investors can’t assume markets will always go up and the CPPIB’s strategy is to have a diverse portfolio that will hold its value over the long term. Shortterm declines are seen as buying opportunities, Machin said Friday. “We will look for things that dislocate below what we think are their fundamental valuations,” he said.

Global stock markets have been rattled in recent days as the tensions between United States and North Korea have risen.

As for the prospect of a bigger sort of downturn, Machin said the plan does regular risk assessments, but it mostly relies on spreading out its investments to a variety of asset classes and geographic markets.

“You can’t, obviously, protect against a really broad market downturn completely, but you can cushion that by diversification across markets that are going to be less impacted in a shock situation.”

The CPP Fund’s publicly traded equities were worth $126.9 billion at June 30, or 38.9 per cent of the total holdings.

It also invests in private equity, government bonds, credit investments, real estate, infrastructure and other assets.

But CPPIB doesn’t invest directly in gold — often seen as a protection against political or economic upheaval.