surface · 0 m

The Waterline

What is known, what is estimated, and what is withheld

GIC manages Singapore's foreign reserves and is one of the largest investors on earth. It is also, by deliberate national policy, a fund whose size is a state secret. This chart does not try to pierce that. It maps the waterline instead: everything GIC and the Government publish, everything US securities law forced into the open, and — drawn just as carefully — the edge where knowledge stops.

A section through the subject. Every district of this chart is a sounding taken from the published surface; the depth of each mark is how far it sits from something GIC states outright. Below the dashed line the scale simply ends.

The ledger of the knowable

Figure	Latest reading	Standing	Source
Rolling 20-year real return	3.4% · 20 years to 2026-03-31	official	GIC report FY2025/26
Asset mix	Equities 56% · Fixed Income 22% · Real Assets 22%	official	GIC report FY2025/26, Table 2
Contribution to the Budget	S$28.5bn · FY2026	official	SingStat M130561
US stakes that crossed 5%	141 companies · 565 filings since 1996	filed	SEC EDGAR, CIK 0000936828
Temasek's US holdings, by comparison	177 positions · US$37.3bn at 2026-06-30	filed	SEC Form 13F — GIC files none
Deals GIC announced itself	80 transactions since 2021 · 10 it says it led	filed	gic.com.sg newsroom — self-selected, not a portfolio
Total assets under management	well over US$100 billion	secret	MOF — exact figure withheld by policy
Annual profit or loss	never published, in any form	secret	absent from every GIC report

Symbology — official published by GIC or the Government · filed compelled by a regulator, read from primary documents · estimated someone's inference, marked as such · secret withheld on purpose.

Why the withholding is the subject

“well over US$100 billion” is the entire official statement of GIC's size. The Ministry of Finance gives its reason plainly: GIC's figure, added to the published assets of MAS and Temasek, would amount to publishing the full size of Singapore's reserves. So the blank space on this chart is not a research failure. It is the thing being surveyed.

Start at The Glass Pool, the one stretch of water transparent to the dollar, or go straight down to Soundings, where every attempt to measure the depth is examined as an attempt.

The gaps, by kind

Every blank on this chart belongs to one of three kinds of absence. Sorting them matters: a figure withheld by policy is a decision; a figure not yet retrieved is a limit of this chart; a figure no law compels is a property of the regime. Conflating the three would let a retrieval limit pose as secrecy, or a law pose as a choice.

Withheld by policy · 5

The figure exists and the Government holds it back by a deliberate rule. This is the kind of gap the chart exists to survey: the blank is the subject, not a research failure.

GIC's total assets under management — MOF's entire official statement of GIC's size is “well over US$100 billion” — a floor, not a figure. source ↗

GIC's annual profit or loss — Never published in any form; the reports disclose rolling 20-year returns and mix, never a yearly profit. source ↗

The expected long-term real rate of return (ELTRROR) — The unpublished assumption from which the Budget's NIRC draw is computed; proposed by the investment entities, concurred with by the President, never disclosed. source ↗

The share of the NIRC actually drawn — The law caps the draw at 50% of expected long-term real returns; the fraction the Budget actually takes each year is not published. source ↗

The composition of the Strategic Portfolio opened 2026-08-03 — Until FY2024/25 GIC published the benchmark representing its Client’s risk appetite and what it contained — 65% global equities, 35% global bonds — together with its rates of return over 20, 10 and 5 years. The FY2025/26 report replaces it with a Strategic Portfolio given only as three asset groups; no weights appear anywhere in the document, and no risk-reference return is reported. Phrase counts and the two verbatim quotations are in framework.json, with both PDFs pinned by SHA-256. source ↗

Not yet retrieved · 3

The record exists and is in principle reachable, but this chart has not reached it. These gaps are this chart's own limits, stated so they are not mistaken for GIC's secrecy.

GIC's newsroom before 24 June 2021 — The announcement archive on this chart begins there; older items are not enumerated. source ↗

Temasek's newsroom before 2021 — temasek.com.sg is rate-limited from this box; hundreds of older pages still return denial pages, so the window stays where coverage is complete. source ↗

GIC annual reports before FY2007/08 — The return history here begins with the FY2007/08 report; earlier reports are not yet extracted into the archive. source ↗

Structurally unobtainable · 4

No law or published record compels the figure into the open. These gaps are not a choice GIC makes each year; the disclosure regime itself cannot produce them.

GIC's US positions under 5% — GIC files no 13F; only stakes that cross the 5% line compel a filing, so the ordinary portfolio is invisible by law. source ↗

Dollar values on GIC's disclosed stakes — 13D and 13G filings report percentages and share counts, never a value; the Glass Pool shows what the law compels and no more. source ↗

Temasek's non-US and unlisted portfolio — The 13F covers only US-listed positions — around a tenth of Temasek's published net portfolio value; the rest is not filed anywhere. source ↗

The sum of the three reservoirs — MAS and Temasek publish their totals, GIC does not; the full size of Singapore's reserves is unobtainable because one addend is withheld. source ↗

Each gap carries the evidence it rests on and a source, so a blank is never just a blank. The kind of a gap is what distinguishes a decision, a limit, and a law. Most gaps here carry no opening date, and that is itself the finding: they have been closed for as long as there has been anything to close. A gap can only be dated when something was published and then stopped being published, which on this record has happened once.

Where to go from here

Each district answers one question. The depth is how far that question sits from something GIC states outright — not how important it is. It is also an assigned ordering, not a derived measure: the intervals are editorial, chosen so the staff reads well, and nothing was computed to place a district at 18 m rather than 14 m. This site holds GIC to the rule that a number must say what it is, and this is the one number here that is not measured.

Depth	District	The question it answers
1 m	The Open Book	Temasek files what GIC never has to: a full quarterly holdings report
2 m	The Rain Gauge	The one performance number GIC publishes
3 m	The Spillway	The deals GIC chose to announce, in its own words
4 m	The Catchment	The shape of the portfolio, without its size
6 m	The Draw	What the reservoir pays into the Budget each year
12 m	The Glass Pool	Thirty years of stakes GIC was legally required to disclose
14 m	The Currents	When the disclosed stakes opened, moved, and went quiet
18 m	Three Reservoirs	GIC, Temasek, MAS — who publishes a waterline and who does not
22 m	The Dam	The constitutional rules that hold the water back
30 m	Soundings	Every attempt to measure the depth, and why none is verifiable

Below the last sounding the scale ends. These four are not soundings into GIC's disclosure, so they carry no depth:

↑	The Rising Water	The chart as it would have read in any past year
⚓	The Foreign Harbour	The same instrument, run in the open: Norway
✓	The Tide Log	The predictions this chart has made, and how they scored
~	Ripples	What each weekly refresh actually changed
∑	The Assay	Recompute this chart's figures in your own browser
§	Chart Legend	Every term on this site, from scratch