Report from
the CIO

I am Ben Samild, the Chief Investment Officer of the Future Fund.

So the Future Fund portfolio performed really very well through a year that was punctuated by quite heterogeneous sort of macroeconomic and market outcomes across different assets. We think this is one of the beauties of having a very diversified portfolio that's really resilient to multiple potential outcomes. And this year that definitely proved out.

The investment highlights for this year were many, kind of always many. I think, you know, we have a very wonderful, hardworking, motivated team doing their best for the country and the portfolio. We have certainly done a lot of very good work, ongoing good work, in trying to understand the broad investment environment and continue to make marginal changes, which sometimes includes sacrifices by different parts of the investment team and, you know, and giving up sort of opportunities and capital in recognition that there are better places across the portfolio to invest. That's a forever discussion, that's part of the feature of being an investor at the Future Fund and it's why we think we can build a slightly more resilient portfolio.

The three dominant sort of return drivers for the portfolio this year were the listed equities portfolio, the credit portfolio and the alternatives or hedge fund portfolio. This next year, like many others, will confront multiple challenges, no doubt, and try to be flexible and adaptive in a, in a perennially changing world. As we look forward, there is fairly clear and obvious, sort of, pair of investment dynamics that we think are really relevant and we want to be, sort of, best in class at understanding, that is the impact of artificial intelligence as a mega thematic, and the impact of energy transition as another mega thematic.

The best opportunities in the next 12 to 36 months, are really the opportunities to understand a very difficult, changing, nuanced investment environment, and how the very significant intersection of some enormous thematics and changes in major democracies, potentially changes in regime, in multiple important jurisdictions are going to impact our portfolio, are going to impact policy choices, macroeconomic conditions, and ultimately financial markets.