If it's normal for performance to go up and down, why haven't I seen my super fund's performance go down before?

FY22 was Future Super’s first year of negative returns since we launched in 2014.*

Even if you haven’t been with Future Super for a long period of time, whether you’ve seen your super returns go down before probably depends on how long you’ve have had a super fund for and how often you’ve looked at your balance.

The Australian and US share markets enjoyed a very buoyant period, where it was pretty rare for markets to be down by much,** from 2009 until the pandemic in 2020. It’s actually historically rare for markets to be so consistently up, and some experts consider that period the “longest bull market in history”. Between Australian shares and US shares, that’s a decent chunk of most super funds’ balanced options.*** That could be why you haven’t noticed a dip in returns before. But again, it’s so important to keep that long term perspective in mind.

*  Calculated by returns at the end of each financial year for each Future Super investment option since inception. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

** https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/the-longest-bull-market-in-history-ends-in-a-savage-sell-off-20200312-p549c0.html https://money.usnews.com/investing/term/bull-market

*** As per ASFA and APRA statistics. In the ASFA and APRA sources, MySuper options are considered balanced.