The California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) recently reported a net return of 13.9% on its investment portfolio for the fiscal year 2025-26, ending June 30. This result saw assets surge to $415.4 billion.
CalSTRS outperformed its total fund benchmark by 0.4 percentage points, with strong returns across most asset classes except for real estate and collaborative strategies. The fund requires an average return of 7% to meet pension obligations, and its long-term performance includes annualized returns of 7%, 9.4%, 7.5%, and 7.8% over the past five, ten, twenty, and thirty years, respectively.
Key performance highlights include:
- Global Equities: 25.1%
- Risk Mitigation Strategies: 16.8%
- Inflation-Sensitive Assets: 13.3%
- Private Equity: 7.5%
- Fixed Income: 4.4%
- Collaborative Strategies: 2.8%
- Real Estate: 0.2%
CalSTRS allocates its assets as follows:
- Global Equities: 43.5%
- Private Equity: 13.58%
- Fixed Income: 12.3%
- Real Estate: 11.88%
- Risk-Mitigating Strategies: 8.52%
- Inflation-Sensitive Assets: 7.03%
- Collaborative Strategies: 1.9%
- Strategic Overlay and Cash: 1.33%
The funded status improved to 79.3% by the end of the previous fiscal year. The pension fund aims to achieve full funding in the future, significantly impacting California’s public school educators and their beneficiaries.
