👉 Background: Saudi Arabia is probably most well known for their massive oil reserves, which generated $326 billion USD in revenue last year. It channels a lot of its oil money into a sovereign wealth fund that’s called the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF).

👉 What happened: With markets shrinking globally, the PIF has just announced a loss of $16.5 billion in 2022. And that's a huge drop in performance compared to 2021, when it made $28 billion of profit.

👉 What else: Saudi Arabia's been working almost as hard as the Barbie marketing team to diversify their investments globally. Think:

• The 2021 takeover of Newcastle United Football Club in the UK
• They recently merged their LIV golf tour with the PGA tour in the US

What's the key learning?

💡A sovereign-wealth fund is an investment fund that's usually owned by a country. These funds have different goals to your regular private funds.

💡They usually invest in assets like stocks, bonds, real estate, and a small chunk in private equity funds. Generally it invests in the safe stuff… because the investments are on behalf of the country’s citizens…for the very long term.

💡But Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund is taking a different approach - with more aggressive and opportunistic investments. When it works, the returns pop. When it fails, it hurts all citizens.

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