The Alaska Permanent Fund, the No. 1 source of general-purpose revenue for state services and the Permanent Fund dividend, suffered a multibillion-dollar loss during last week’s stock market crash.
According to preliminary figures published by the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp., which manages the fund, the fund’s assets declined from $81.7 billion on Tuesday to $79.7 billion at the end of the day on Friday. Figures for Monday were not immediately available.
From Wednesday through Friday, the S&P 500, a leading American stock market, declined 10.5% as markets reacted to President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on most imported goods.
Paulyn Swanson, a spokesperson for the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp., said the Permanent Fund’s value declined by 2.7% during the same period.
Speaking last Thursday, APFC executive director Deven Mitchell noted that the fund is invested in a variety of assets, including real estate, bonds, private equity and gold, as well as publicly traded stocks.
That means the Permanent Fund hasn’t performed as well as the S&P 500 in recent years, but during a downturn, it doesn’t suffer as much.
“In our public equity portfolio, we’ve had a tilt away from growth stocks and the S&P 500, which we’ve suffered under over the last two years, but now we’re benefiting from that tilt towards value. So in some ways … we’ll be making up ground relative to our benchmark,” he said, referring to a mix of investments that the corporation measures its performance against.
Since 2018, an annual transfer from the Permanent Fund to the state treasury has been largest source of general-purpose revenue for services and the dividend.
In the fiscal year that starts July 1, that transfer will be worth $3.9 billion. All of the state’s oil revenue combined is expected to be worth less than half that — $1.6 billion.
For the moment, money for the transfer is kept in the earnings reserve, a spendable account within the fund. As of Feb. 28, Swanson said, the earnings reserve contained $9.8 billion — enough for the upcoming transfer, an inflation-proofing payment, and part of the upcoming fiscal year 2027.
At that time, the earnings reserve also held $1.8 billion in unrealized gains — much of which may have been lost in the market slide.
• James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
