Super performance.

• Q. How is performance calculated?
  • A. The fund.
    We look at the exit price at the beginning and end of each quarter.  The change in price is then shown as a percentage.
    
    Your individual super.
    Your individual performance may vary from the overall performance for two reasons:
    
    1. the unit price changes daily, and so investment performance depends on the day you’ve invested
    2. you need to consider the impact of any additional contributions.
• Q. Why is the performance of Virgin Super different to the Index return I read about in the paper?
  • A. There are few things to think about when comparing Virgin Super to the Index return.
    
    1. Index (market) returns are usually quoted over a full year or quarter.
    2. Index returns don’t include buy/sell transaction costs or tax.
    3. Virgin Super has been growing pretty quickly and there’s sometimes a delay between receiving and investing dollars, technically known as interfunding.
• Q. I'm kind of worried about the sharemarket going up and down.
  • A. Super is a long-term investment, so try not to pay too much attention to short-term returns.  Five years is considered a reasonable timeframe for assessing your super performance.  Short-term gains are the realm of the experts - by the time you’ve reacted to one set of market conditions, they’ve already changed.
    
    Chasing short-term gains.
    Frequently switching investment options based on short-term market performance could mean you actually lose out over time.  Most people will only need to change their investment options when their circumstances change significantly, roughly two or three times in their lifetime.