Pension Pulse

Sean Conlon, Hugh Leask, Justina Lee and Sarah Min of CNBC report the S&P 500 rises to record close Friday and posts strongest week since April:  The S&P 500 rose on Friday as traders interpreted an unexpected loss of jobs in July as meaning the Federal Reserve won’t need to raise interest rates soon and can leave monetary policy on hold for now. The broad market index advanced 0.62% for a record close of 7,757.64, while the Nasdaq Composite outperformed, climbing 1.3% to 26,690.62. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 151.83 points, or 0.28%, to end at 54,036.93. Stocks posted a second straight week of gains. The S&P 500 — which closed above 7,700 for the first time ever earlier this week — advanced 3.6% in the period. The Nasdaq saw a gain of 5.2%, thanks to a bounce-back in chip stocks. The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) ended the week up more than 7%. The Dow, on the other hand, gained nearly 3% during the week. All three indexes notched their best w...

Peter Rubinstein of Northeastern Global News reports this student wowed one of Canada’s largest pension funds with custom automation: When Darhlilove Botchway arrived in wintery Toronto in 2025 from his home in Ghana, he felt like a fish out of water. The subfreezing temperatures shocked his system, which was accustomed to West Africa’s consistent heat. Canadian cuisine was also unfamiliar to him, he said. “My taste buds did not really want to cope from the beginning,” he said, chuckling as he recalled his move to pursue an information systems master’s degree at Northeastern University in Toronto. But just as he did after moving to North America, Botchway was quick to adapt and excel as a co-op at OPTrust, a prominent pension fund just a short walk from Northeastern Toronto’s downtown campus.  OPTrust, where Botchway is an IT auditor, is responsible for ensuring that about 118,000 workers employed by the Ontario government and other agencies receive retireme...

Freschia Gonzales of Benefits and Pensions Monitor reports  Canada's private sector shed 25,800 pension members in 2024: Canada's private sector lost 25,800 registered pension plan members in 2024 even as national membership climbed to nearly 7.4m, exposing a widening split between public and private workplace retirement coverage.  The overall gain of 132,000 members, or 1.8 percent, from 2023 came almost entirely from public plans.   According to Statistics Canada, public sector plans added nearly 157,900 participants, a 4 percent increase, taking the public total to just over 4m.  ...

Josh Welsh of Benefits and Pensions Monitor reports  IMCO adds $300 million in pension assets with Hamilton mandate: The Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (IMCO) has been selected to manage approximately $300 million in pension assets for the City of Hamilton, consolidating three legacy defined benefit (DB) plans that cover more than 1,000 retirees, deferred members and beneficiaries, according to its press release Thursday. According to the organization, the mandate will require an onboarding process during which IMCO will work with the city on investment decision-making and transition planning for the legacy portfolios ...

Hugh Son of CNBC reports on how Leopold Aschenbrenner built a $45 billion AI hedge fund — and lost most of it in days: Two years ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner argued he was one of few people in the world who saw the future clearly. In a sprawling, 165-page essay that became required reading in Silicon Valley, the former OpenAI researcher positioned himself as a kind of prophet for the coming age of artificial super intelligence. But this week, the limits of Aschenbrenner’s vision were on display when the AI-themed hedge fund he runs — named Situational Awareness, also the title of his viral June 2024 manifesto — ran into the harsh reality of tumbling semiconductor stocks and Wall Street margin calls. At its peak earlier this month, his fund sat atop $45 billion in assets. By Thursday, however, after being forced to offload all of his leveraged stock bets — including hard-hit names like SK Hynix and CoreWeave — to Ken Griffin’s Citadel at a discount, the fund’s holdings p...