Norway oil fund plans to cut US Treasury holdings

Norges Bank Investment Management has told Norway's Finance Ministry it wants a smaller US Treasury book. CNBC reported the letter on 4 September 2026, signed by NBIM CEO Nicolai Tangen and Norges Bank chief Ida Wolden Bache, after it was made public Friday.

The letter is a recommendation, not an executed sale. Parliament and the ministry still have to accept any allocation change. The letter itself says Norges Bank will come back with an implementation plan only after the ministry takes a position, and that any shift should be gradual.

The path the headlines skip is the index math. Tangen and Wolden Bache recommend cutting the government subindex of the bond benchmark from 70% to 50%. CNBC says that maps NBIM's Treasury share of the bond book from 34.1% to 21.9%, euro area government bonds from 16.8% to 14.1%, and Japanese government bonds up to 7.4% from 4.6%. They also want to raise non-government US fixed income, including corporates, to 27.6% from 16.2%.

The other mechanical change is how governments are weighted. The letter recommends switching the government subindex from GDP weights to market-value weights, on the view that high government debt is now common across developed markets rather than a Japan-and-euro-area quirk. That is a benchmark rewrite, not a trading call for next week.

CNBC puts the fund at about $2.3 trillion, with around $1.65 trillion in equities (about 1.5% of listed shares worldwide) and about $592 billion in fixed income. Tangen and Wolden Bache argue a long-term investor can take more premium in mortgage-backed securities. The letter separately notes a ministry-appointed expert group is due to report by 25 January 2027.

The Treasury tape is already tight at the long end, where the 30-year yield recently printed a 19-year high. CNBC also cites an NBIM stress test in which an AI correction could wipe $740 billion, or 35%, off the fund.

Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC the size of the Treasury cut is not huge, but the signal that traditional holders are less reliable matters. That is his colour, not NBIM's language. There is no start date for sales in the letter.