Norway's state pension fund made strong gains in the first half of the year. As the Norwegian Bank announced, the return was 9.4 percent. That corresponds to a good 100 billion euros. Converted to every Norwegian, this is around 17,000 euros for each. On June 30, the fund, which is considered the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, had a total value of 1.11 trillion euros. Oil-rich Norway set up the fund in the 1990s to protect the economy against volatility in oil prices and to finance the extensive benefits of the Norwegian welfare state. "Equity investments made the most positive contributions to returns in the first half of the year," said Nicolai Tangen, head of Norges Bank Investment Management. Investments in the energy and financial sectors and in technology companies would have paid off in particular. The fund is fed with the income from Norwegian oil and gas production, managed by the central bank on behalf of the Treasury and invests in thousands of companies worldwide, including large corporations such as Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. In the past six months, the equivalent of 14.1 billion euros was withdrawn from the fund. 72.4 percent was invested in stocks, 25.1 percent in bonds and 0.1 percent in unlisted infrastructure and renewable energy. Fund boss Tangen warned, however, that rising prices worldwide could result in unprecedented losses. Because inflation could ultimately lead to much higher interest rates. This, in turn, would mostly affect the fund's portfolio in two different ways. Because both the bond and stock markets would be burdened. "There could be declines (in the value of the entire portfolio) as we have never seen before," said Tangen, without giving any specific figures. The fund generated its worst quarterly result to date in the first quarter of 2020, when the corona pandemic began: there was a loss of around 130 billion euros.