The big picture: Focus on super’s long-term returns

When it comes to superannuation and saving for retirement more generally, it’s the long term that counts.

That’s great in theory, but not so easy to swallow when markets plunge, your super balance takes a hit, and everyone around you is panicking.

In the short term, markets react and often overreact to the news of the day. Share prices soar on good economic data one day and plummet on news of rising interest rates the next. 

In the long run, though, those daily fluctuations even out and the underlying value of investments shines through.

Weighing up long-term risk and returns

As Warren Buffett’s teacher, Benjamin Graham famously said: “In the short run the market is a voting machine but in the long run it’s a weighing machine.” 

But don’t take his word for it. SuperGuide has prepared a visual representation of super fund performance over periods of one month to 15 years, for ten years to June 2025. We would like to thank Chant West for providing the data.

In the animated video below, the five coloured bars for each time period represent the five risk categories used by Chant West: Conservative (21–40% growth assets), Balanced (41–60% growth assets), Growth (61–80% growth assets), High Growth (81–95% growth assets), and All Growth (96–100% growth assets). The higher the level of growth assets such as shares and property, the higher the risk of short-term fluctuations and the higher the potential long-term returns.

As you can see on the left of the graph, over the past ten years returns over one month and one year whip around like the tail of an over-eager puppy. Predictably, the most volatile returns are for the All Growth and High Growth risk categories.

But shift your focus to the far right of the graph and returns over 15 years have been remarkably stable for the past ten years. As theory would predict, generally the higher the risk the higher the return.