Why your super balance changes every day

Your superannuation is invested in assets – from shares to bonds, to infrastructure to cash, and more – and the value of these assets is constantly changing.

Because your super balance is displayed on your smartMonday personal homepage, you can see your balance change day by day.

“And sometimes, seeing this change can be worrying. While investments do tend to rise over time, they can go up and down frequently, especially during periods of volatility, which we’ve experienced in the past few years and expect to continue,” explains smartMonday head smartCoach Matt Davey.

A case in point is the alarming period of rapid decline in early 2020 when the pandemic emerged. In less than a month, over February and March, the S&P/ASX 200 – the flagship index of the Australian sharemarket – fell by a third, a decline matched in other world sharemarkets.

But the key point is this: in 15 months the ASX 200 regained all that lost value. So those who didn’t change their investments were back to their pre-COVID balance by May 2021.

Source: FactSet (January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021)

In contrast, most of those who did change lost out. They reacted to seeing their super fall in value by switching investments, choosing less risky options to safeguard against further decline.

“But they didn’t know when to switch back, and by the time many of them did they’d missed a large part of the market recovery, effectively locking in their losses and ending up worse off than those who waited out the market turbulence,” says Davey.

Even experts agree it is next to impossible to time the market – knowing when to switch from growth to defensive investments to maximise gains and minimise loss is fraught and uncertain. The consistent advice in investing, especially superannuation, is to focus on the long term.

“The moral is clear: watching your balance and worrying about day-to-day or even month-to-month changes can distract you from thinking long term,” says Davey.

If you look at smartMonday’s monthly performance tables, you can see results are listed in a range, from 10-years down to three months. We recommend focusing on the longer term, not the short-term results. The figures in the 10-year and seven-year columns tell the story of our investment options’ performance as they’ve endured market change over time – and for every option that story is positive. While that past performance isn’t guaranteed to continue in the future, it’s the best guide we’ve got.

Your superannuation is a long-term investment, it spans your life journey from when you first started working through to your retirement. Over that time it is meant to become a strong asset that will fund your life after work. Thinking of it that way will always be healthier than focusing on the short term.

“The short term comes into focus as you get close to retirement and preserving the super you’ve accumulated becomes a priority. At this time members often lean to more defensive investments. Our MySuper investment option is designed with this in mind: weighted toward growth investments early on and becoming more defensive as members age,” adds Davey.

Seeking advice and considering your options in depth is always a good idea. So, here’s a quick reminder that the fees you pay to smartMonday cover our smartCoaches, who are available to talk through your options and guide you in your superannuation journey.