The Swiss National bank recently published their schedule of public investments for the most recent quarter ending in March: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1582202/000158220220000002/xslForm13F_X01/InfoTable_Q12020.xml.
After examining their portfolio mix, just about 4% of the portfolio is invested in the Materials segment, which encompasses 175 positions totaling USD $4.5B. Of this, 24 positions are in gold mining stocks totaling USD $1.216B and 9 are in silver stocks totaling USD $26M.
On the Gold side of the ledger, Equinox Gold was a new addition to the investment portfolio as they added 290,528 shares. Kirkland Lake Gold was the biggest percentage change addition increasing shares by 613,657 to 2,145,062, an increase of 40% QoQ, from 1,531,405 prior.
The SNB’s top 5 gold positions in terms of current market value are Newmont, Franco-Nevada, Wheaton Precious Metals, Agnico and Kirkland Lake. Notably missing from the list is Barrick Gold.
On the silver side, 9 silver stocks totaled USD $26M representing just .02% of the SNB’s overall public investment portfolio. Pan American, which generates more revenues from Gold than Silver, accounted for about 43% of the total. The silver mining sector is so small and fragmented that any meaningful allocation to it would be worth watching.
As this schedule comes out quarterly, I plan on updating accordingly to compare the relative changes in the data. Will be interesting to see the behavior in the relative weighting to Gold and Silver stocks going forward and how they are allocating across the various different names. Not a new phenomenon as the SNB has had mining stocks in their portfolio for quite some time, but given we are in a precious metals bull market, it is even more interesting and ironic at the same time. Until next update.
More here: https://twitter.com/EconomicAlpha/status/1264941153889239046?s=20
Soure: SNL / S&P
