smartMonday outperforms in shaky beginning to 2022

Most of our investments are performing above the market in the all-important medium-to-long term, explains Ed Tomlinson.

As soon as the year began, markets were bombarded with bad news, rocking the value of shares and other assets where smartMonday members’ superannuation is invested.

Values swung up and down over the first three months of the year, resulting in negative returns that were softened by positive gains from our investments in Australian shares.

Across the medium and long-term the majority of smartMonday investment options were ahead of comparable super fund results at the end of March. (You can see this in the table below where green shading shows where we outperform the SuperRatings median.)

We’ve recently outlined the various reasons for turbulence in financial markets this year. What we remain uncertain about is how investments will perform from here on. The same powerful forces that rocked markets – inflation, interest rate rises, the war in Europe and the coronavirus – are still in play.

For now, you should expect uncertain sharemarket performance. But we are working to limit the impact by:

• preparing our more defensive assets for the impact of interest rate rises
• keeping our investment strategy stable to manage the risks inflation poses
• investing in quality companies that have lower price volatility.

We do know markets tend to be volatile during periods of change and uncertainty, which we’ve seen this year. At such a time it is even more important for you to remain focused on your investment objectives.

Importantly, we know over the long term that sharemarket investments do rise: smartMonday’s strong long-term performance is obvious in the table above. So we encourage you to take a view of the broader picture and carefully consider what you should do if you’re concerned about current performance.

Ed Tomlinson is head of investments at smartMonday