Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund is adding currency hedges just as the country’s most well-known exponents of the strategy cut back.
The world’s largest pension fund, which oversees the equivalent of $1.46 trillion, revealed in its annual report last month it was buying overseas bonds with hedges against possible yen fluctuations for the first time. Earnings reports from Japanese life insurers show they cut the proportion of the portfolio they hedge to 55% in March, from as high as 63% in September 2016.