The results for the 2020/21 financial year highlight the importance of investing your super for the long term.
While it’s natural to feel unsettled when there’s significant volatility in global financial markets, as we saw when the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread in the March 2020 quarter, volatility is a normal part of investing for the long term.
However, Qantas Super’s safety-first approach to investing means your super is designed to weather any storm. We protect your super by investing for the long-term and building well diversified portfolios with investments that complement each other.
This approach allows us to both protect your super through periods of market uncertainty, as well as capitalise on periods of growth. So, while it may be tempting to change your strategy when you see share markets falling, in the long run it can make more sense to either stay invested or consider investing more. This is the sort of decision a Super Adviser can help you with.
By changing to a lower risk option in a downturn, you risk selling out at a time when prices are low, rather than taking advantage of falls when markets recover, as they did through 2020/21.
In fact, after a year to forget, markets rebounded remarkably quickly: the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index, for example, rose 24 percent over the financial year, marking its biggest gain since its inception. The rebound was buoyed by factors including central banks lowering interest rates, governments around the world providing stimulus, and the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines.