Private pension funds stay away from Stock Exchange

The global crash of stock exchanges has encouraged private pension funds not to buy shares, as their assets increased. Pension funds are keeping away from the Stock Exchange, and some of them have not bought shares for several months now, say fund managers. While in June, pension funds had 6% of their assets placed in listed shares, at the end of October, their percentage had diminished to 2% and has continued to go down this month. “We have not liquidated our share portfolio entirely, we still have a very small one, accounting for around 0.5% of the assets. For several months now, we have refrained from buying shares, which has led to a natural dilution of our portfolio. Shares never accounted for more than 7% of our assets, a peak we reached in June,” says Radu Craciun, investment manager at Interamerican Pensii. At the end of October, pension funds’ investments in shares amounted to around 12 million RON (3.3 million euros), while the funds’ overall investments amounted to 612 million RON (over 167 million euros).