This giant pension sold PG & E shares before the collapse of January

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The New York State Teachers 'and Administrators' Board made a decisive move to sell its entire stake in troubled public services
PG & E

(ticker: PCG) in the fourth quarter.

The New York State Teachers' Retirement System, which excludes the City of New York, sold the 811,562 PG & E shares it held at the end of the third quarter, ending in 2018, according to a form sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. NYSTRS managed to dodge the fall in PG & E's shares in January, although equities tumbled 48% in the fourth quarter, as the market equated the utility's potential liabilities following a deadly fire in California. It is unclear when the pension sold the shares because the prescribed forms only require the disclosure of the badets at the end of the reporting periods.

PG & E shares have fallen 46% so far in 2019, as its CEO has resigned and the utility has filed for bankruptcy protection.

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The pension refused to comment on its fourth quarter trading.

NYSTRS has also reduced
Qualcomm

stock (QCOM), which has also fallen in 2019 so far, down 12%. However, not all fourth quarter calls are complete. He also sold
Bank of America

(LAC)
Oracle

(ORCL), and
General Electric

(GE), and the three are up by double-digit percentages, and at the top of the
S & P 500
9% are advancing so far this year.

NYSTRS is indeed a giant – Pensions & Investments magazine has highlighted that it is the seventh largest US public pension fund as of September 30, 2017. It is also well managed. It had the highest capitalization ratio – 94.2% – among the 10 largest pensions on this list, which meant that NYSTRS 'badets were less than 6% less than the expected benefits coverage. In comparison, the magazine estimated that the largest pension system, California's public employee pension system, or Calpers, had a 27% deficit.

We found that the chip maker Qualcomm is considered by at least one badyst as a risky investment. It is not surprising, therefore, that an important overhang remains: the patent licensing complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission against the company. The pension sold 349,370 Qualcomm shares in the fourth quarter, reducing its investment to 1.8 million shares.

NYSTRS sold 443,836 GE shares between the fourth quarter and the end of 2018, with 13.1 million shares. The distressed conglomerate has a lot of moving parts, but the market was not unhappy that GE did not provide an indication of fourth-quarter profits or that they did not meet expectations. The important thing is that the recovery of society seems to be on the right track.

Bank of America shares are a choice in the industry that, according to one badyst, is one of the "incredibly low price" stocks. The pension fund paid 653,705 shares of the bank in the fourth quarter, reducing its investment to 14.5 million shares.

Earlier this month, Barclays and Morgan Stanley downgraded the Oracle software giant. Nevertheless, the stock is up almost 12% since the beginning of the year. NYSTRS sold 573,129 Oracle shares in the fourth quarter to close the year with 4.16 million shares.

Write to Ed Lin to [email protected] and follow @BarronsEdLin.