Norway’s nest egg

The value of Norway's sovereign wealth fund rose 6.3% last quarter, adding a whopping $110 billion to the country’s stockpile despite technically falling just shy of its target benchmark return.

What started as the Norwegian government’s rainy day fund — somewhere to put its excess oil revenues in the 1990s — has become the largest investor on the planet. Today, 71% of its investment portfolio is in equities: a total of $1.1 trillion spread across more than 8,800 companies in 65 countries. Mirroring a diversified market index due to its sheer size, the fund has slices of every major sector. Visualized above are ~4,900 of the fund's equity investments: the smallest dots in the chart, the ones that you can barely see, represent $10 million stakes in individual companies.

Keeping it public

But, while its equities portfolio returned a respectable 9% in Q1, its fixed income and unlisted real estate investments saw losses, pulling down the overall return. Indeed, in the past 2 decades, the fund's equity investments have grown some 21x in value — and its success in public stocks is one reason why the Norwegian government last week confirmed it wants nothing to do with private equity, even as other institutional investors increase their exposure to the asset class.

In case managing this behemoth portfolio wasn't enough, you can catch the fund's chief hosting his podcast, where he interviews the likes of Elon Musk and Satya Nadella — two CEOs of companies that the fund owns a large slice of.

Slippery slope: When you're managing a pot of $1.6 trillion, even a tiny Excel error can result in a $92 million miscalculation.