Investments

Good afternoon and welcome. Thank you for joining us at today's end of financial year investment update webinar. This afternoon we'll be discussing a number of things. We're going to be looking at AustralianSuper's investment performance to 30 June 2024, how we're managing your super in the current market climate, our outlook for Australia and Global economies, as well as investment markets and key things for you to consider when managing your investment choices.

My name is Peter Treseder, I'm an Education Manager and for 25 years I've been helping AustralianSuper members better understand their super so that they can get a better retirement outcome, and I will be your host for this afternoon.

In the spirit of reconciliation AustralianSuper does recognise the traditional custodians of the land of which we work, and we pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging and we extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

AustralianSuper's head office is on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation and today I'm talking to you from the land of the Boonwurrung people which is down the south-east area of Melbourne stretching all the way down to South East Gippsland.

What we're talking about today is general information, I do not know your personal circumstances and situations so what we're talking about will be of a general nature. Before making a decision, please consider the information that you need to make a right choice for yourself by reading the Product Disclosure Statement and Target Market Determination.

We will be talking about investment returns so please remember investment returns are not guaranteed, and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

Now I'm not the only host today I have some experts with me to get down into the nitty-gritty of super. I'm joined by Sam Weaner our Manager of Investment Communications. Amber Rabinov, Head of Macro Research and Strategy and Nicholas Keats one of our Financial Planners. They're all going to help us today. Just a brief intro from each of you. I'll start with you Sam what you do and how do you help members?

Thank you, Peter. I'm Sam Weaner and in my role at AustralianSuper I provide updates to members on our investment strategy as well as the performance of our investment options.

And Amber same question to you.

Hi everyone, I'm Amber Rabinov, I lead a team of highly specialised economists and strategists and together we work to find investable opportunities in asset markets and the broader portfolio in order to help maximise financial outcomes for all of AustralianSuper members in retirement.

And last but not least Nick as a Financial Planner what do you do to help members with their super?

Hello Peter, and hello everyone on the webinar today my name's Nicholas Keats, I'm a salaried employee of AustralianSuper. I'm licensed through a group called Industry Fund Services as an authorised representative providing comprehensive financial planning advice to AustralianSuper members. I've been a Planner for about 20 odd years, and I've been with this group since 2006. I guess planning as a concept is working one-on-one or one-on-two with clients to try and help improve the sense of control and comfort you experience day to-day over your financial affairs and reducing uncertainty into the longer-term future.

Thanks for joining us, now some of you today may have already watched the end of financial performance update presented by Alistair Barker, our Head of Asset Allocation. If you haven't watched it I do suggest you have a look at it to get a broader view of the financial year just gone by. Alistair talked about the positive returns that have been delivered to members over the past 12 months. Now all super funds have a default investment option, that is how your super is invested if you don't make your own investment choice. At AustralianSuper the default investment option is called the balanced option. So, Sam can you take us through the balanced option numbers because the majority of our members are in the balanced option, and we must remember you're going to be presenting two sets of numbers. One for our people in accumulation phase, that's building up their super and what we call super accounts, and one for those in our account-based pension product called Choice Income. Now the performance numbers between these two accounts differ due to the way they’ve been taxed, but Sam how did we get to the numbers we produced this year?

Thank you Peter, so the end of the financial year gives us a great chance to reflect on recent performance and also gain an understanding of what's contributing to member returns. So, over the last year we have seen positive performance from each of AustralianSuper’s investment options. This includes the PreMixed options as well as the DIY mixed options. We'll focus on the balanced option today as well as what's contributed to the balanced options returns. So, for the returns to 30 June 2024 the balanced option for super accounts returned 8.46% for one year with an average annual return of just over 8% over 10 years, and 9.26% per annum since inception back in August 1985. When looking at different time periods it is important to really compare those returns of what those different time periods mean, because each starting point does make a difference. So for example if you look at the 20-year number it looks a little bit lower than some of the others because the 20-year number includes the period of the global financial crisis, which is when listed share markets sold off in 2008 and 2009. Which is a little bit lower than that of the 15-year number. The 15-year number started in the middle of 2009 and this was during some of when the market sold off the most during the global financial crisis. So effectively had a lower base to start which gave it higher performance over that time period. So, it's often beneficial to look behind the numbers to see what's contributing to returns. Now if we turn to the Choice Income option, so this is the balanced option for Choice Income accounts, this is the account-based pension product for those that are in retirement. This option returned 9.25% over one year and 8.83% per annum over 10 years to 30 June 2024. Now the returns for Choice Income often have a higher performance than super options and this is because Australian taxes do not apply to investment earnings, which gives them a benefit. Similar to the super option, the 15-year figure is from the middle of the global financial crisis and then since inception number was from January 2008, which was before the global financial crisis started and includes that downturn during the 2008 and 2009 time period.

Thanks Sam, it's good to see long-term returns continue to be strong. What are some of the factors that contributed to this year's returns?

The biggest contributor to returns over this last financial year has been the performance of listed share markets and this chart shows the daily performance of market indexes over the last financial year and includes Australian shares and international shares. So, the broad market for Australian shares gained over 12% for the whole year, while international shares by rose by just over 19%. The chart also shows how volatile markets can be from a day-to-day basis. So, if you look back a year ago there was a lot of uncertainty around inflation and the level of interest rates, and this led markets to go sideways and even negative during the first part of the financial year. As investors gained more confidence over the year there was a lot of strong corporate earnings that fed higher share prices as the year progressed. So, in the domestic market as an example, banking shares had the most impact with their return making up about half of the 12% return. In international shares the big story was the technology boom this continued to drive markets with significant returns from stocks like NVIDIA, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft. So, when we have seen periods like this before, where technology advances have really led to significant growth and even investment opportunities, in some ways you can liken artificial intelligence as similar to the inventions of the mobile phone and the internet. Each of these inventions led to an increase in productivity gains and even led to higher economic growth over time.

Sam, many members are aware of listed investment sectors such as shares, property, fixed interest and cash. What about unlisted assets, what are they and what impact did they have on our numbers this year?

Yeah, well while the last few years has been an exciting time for listed shares, returns have been a little bit more modest for other asset classes in the portfolio. Over the last year, listed assets were affected by the higher sustained level of interest rates that we've seen in the market and this puts some downward pressure in their valuations. This has meant lower returns for asset classes like infrastructure, property and private equity. Compared to listed markets like Australian shares and international shares over the last year. Now there were some assets in the portfolio that did continue to do well in the current environment, and this included seaports, airports and toll roads. On screen there are just a few examples of some of the investments that are in the portfolio. So, New South Wales ports, Sydney Airport and Transurban Chesapeake are examples of essential public services that we invest in to help grow your super.

Okay Sam, now you've given us the balanced numbers for the default option. How do those numbers compare to our peers?

When investing it's definitely important to compare your performance to a benchmark and for the balanced option its objective is to out outperform the median fund in its peer group over the medium to longer term. This graph shows the balanced option in orange compared to the median return in blue. Over the long term over 10, 15 and 20 years the balance d option has achieved this objective and we've been able to achieve this outperformance largely due to our active management approach to help enhance returns over time.

Now Sam, as someone who speaks to members every day and responds to members questions, one of the questions we're having, and you may be aware of that some members are asking why our performance has lagged behind our peers over recent times. Can you shed some light on this?

Yeah, there's definitely a few factors to consider there. On this chart you'll see that the one and the three-year number, we are slightly below the peer group during that time. At AustralianSuper the reason behind this is we do seek to adjust the asset allocation or the mix of asset classes in the portfolio based on our economic outlook and the valuation of investment markets. So if you look back a year to two years ago, we believed that the chances of an economic slowdown were heightened. There was a lot of news at the time of a potential recession in the US, a potential recession in Australia and in line with that thinking at the time we thought that was going to impact share market performance. So, we positioned many of the PreMixed options including the balanced option more defensively. This meant we had lower exposure to listed shares like international shares and more exposure to defensive assets like fixed interest in the portfolio compared to our peers. So, now what we see is over the last two years, that due to the post-pandemic consumer spending and the technology boom, listed share markets, especially international shares, continue to do really well. So, our lower exposure to those markets compared to our peers ultimately led to a short-term impact to our relative performance. Now currently we do see a reduced likelihood of a significant economic slowdown in the near term. So, since January of this year we have increased our exposure to international shares, which is helping to improve our relative performance compared to peers in recent months.

Thanks Sam. Now as we know and as you have shown each year goes by and produces another number but it's those numbers adding on top of each other through the wonders of compounding interest. Something that Einstein once said was the eighth wonder of the world, and that compounding interest is the key to growth of superannuation accounts. Can you give us an example or show us how these compound returns build our members balance?

Sure, the benefit of investing over time is that your portfolio has the potential to earn income on top of the returns you've already returned in your balance. So much like a snowball picking up momentum as it's rolling down a hill, getting bigger and bigger. So, for example if you invested $100,000 in the balance option 20 years ago and made no additional contributions, over the first nine years you would have actually doubled your money from $100,000 to $200,000 and that's even while navigating the global financial crisis. If you fast forward in another five years you would add another $100,000 and over the course of the full 20 years your balance would have grown to over $450,000. So, while it's never guaranteed, investing over time does provide those opportunities to help build your balance.

Now just quickly to you Nick, as someone else who deals with members every day and they see these ups and downs and they get worried when volatility occurs. What is one of the first things that all members should think about when it comes to their super investments?

Thanks Peter. Look one of the things that I'd say is first to consider is the conflict between what I'd call the now, that is how we internalise short-term returns, particularly the bad ones and the long-term nature of superannuation. So that is your super is likely to be yours into the late 80s or 90s and possibly even longer. We tend to find that the white noise of investment markets in the short term can distract from good decision making over that sort of a time frame. You can see in the slide here for the balanced option at AustralianSuper going back historically. There's been a couple of significant drops including things like the GFC, 15 or 16 years back, COVID-19 of more recent. History does tend to show that markets do bounce back and as a result consistency is certainly our friend. As a current example the market turbulence this last week just gone shows how fast things can change. It does mean that if making a dash for cash, in a flash-crash, is the main driver, then we may well have lost sight of quality well-structured decision-making. Given we sadly can't foresee market returns, it's important to make sure that you invest consistently and for the long-term, to ensure that you don't miss the rising tide when it comes.

Thanks Nick. Now, turning to you Amber. Sam has spoken about improving economic conditions, can you elaborate on this for us and comment on how changing economic conditions here and overseas, may impact investment markets and ultimately member balances?

Sure, well the macro picture which we discussed earlier in the year at our mid financial year update has evolved broadly in line with our expectations. So, if we look at the global picture to start with, inflation has broadly continued to ease in developed markets back towards Central Bank targets of around 2% and you can see this in the left-hand chart on the screen. In broad terms, economic growth has been tracking it around a trend pace. Labor markets have also become more balanced after experiencing tight conditions for the past few years, so that is strong employment growth and record low unemployment rates. Now this picture has evolved in 2024 with a slowing in jobs growth from the very strong pace seen in 2022 through to 2023 and also a gradual nudge higher in unemployment rates as strong population growth has added to the labour supply. Now what this has meant is that it's given many advanced economy central banks including the Bank of Canada, the Swiss National Bank, Sweden's Ricks Bank the ECB and most recently the bank of England, it's given them sufficient confidence to start reducing policy interest rates and you can see this occurring in the right-hand chart on the screen. Now as we forewarned in our February update, this last mile of the normalisation of inflation has been a little bit harder in some economies and this has meant that some central banks have yet to move interest rates lower. In international markets most notable in this category is the US Federal Reserve. Now having said that, following the Fed's most recent meeting in late July, the central bank has started to shift its tone from being highly attentive to inflation risks, to being attentive to both sides of the dual mandate. That is paying equal focus on both sustainable prices growth as well as full employment and Chair Pal has acknowledged that the downside risks to the employment mandate are real. Given that, and following the weaker than expected July jobs report and softening growth and employment outlook, markets are now looking for the Fed to start cutting the funds rate from its September meeting.

Thanks Amber, so you're looking beyond our shores how about a bit closer to home what's the outlook for Australia?

Thanks Peter, so in Australia inflation has lagged trends relative to other developed markets, in part because of the Australian economy's relatively later return to more normal activity after extensive COVID lockdowns. In Q2, headline inflation came in at 3.8% in year-on-year terms and the RBA is not expecting its preferred measure of core inflation to move sustainably back inside its 2-3% target band until late 2025 and into 2026. Moreover, it remains alert to the upside risks to this inflation outlook that is inflation taking even longer to return to target and that's because overall demand in the Australian economy remains stronger than supply. And that concern is likely to persist for a little time longer, particularly given the boost to disposable income coming through via the extraordinary fiscal largesse from both the federal as well as the state governments at the moment. To give some context around this together with the long-heralded stage three tax cuts, the recent cost of living measures across both levels of government adds up to around 1.5% of GDP. We've also seen the resilience of the Australian labour market also continuing, and like in international markets we've seen the unemployment rate slowly rising due to strong population growth. It's now up to a little bit above 4% up from those multi-decade lows in the mid 3.5% range which persisted through mid-22 and into 2023. So, when we put these inflation and labour market stories together, that slow progress on inflation, only moderate easing in labour market indicators, and also that uncertainty around the potential boost to demand from fiscal stimulus, when we put all this together, we continue to expect to have to wait a little bit longer for the RBA to start cutting rates relative to its developed market peers. Now bringing this back to investment markets, the trend for lower policy interest rates will work to lower borrowing costs and support the continuation of growth and the current economic cycle. Interest rate cutting cycles have traditionally been positive for growth-oriented asset classes particularly listed equities and because Australian markets tend to trade in sympathy with global markets, we may see the positive influence of lower global policy rates on our market. Even if the RBA keeps the cash rate here unchanged for now.

Thanks Amber, now going back to our update in February, you mentioned that 2024 was going to be a big year for elections around the world. We've seen some elections come and go, we've seen surprise elections, how are they progressing and what's to come?

Great memory Peter, we did talk about this earlier in the year, around how elections would provide a lot of uncertainty this year, that's certainly been the case as you've mentioned. There was a surprise election for instance in France, a very early election in the UK and even the outcome in India's election was unexpected. So, whilst Prime Minister Modi secured a third term as leader, he governs now from a weakened position without a parliamentary majority. Now, of course all market focus is on the upcoming US presidential election that is set for the 5th of November. This focus has only grown after a series of unpredictable events, including an assassination attempt of former president and current Republican party nominee Donald Trump. Whilst the current Democratic party President Joe Biden he stepped aside as his party's candidate in a very unusual move for his vice president Kamala Harris.

Now our research teams have been spending a lot of time thinking about the macro and the investment market implications of the potential outcome of the US election and it's not only about who gains the presidency, which is important, so to, is the balance of power in Congress. That is in the House and in the Senate, and this is because whilst the President has powers to pass certain rulings such as on tariffs and on foreign policy, when it comes to fiscal policy, so taxation decisions, spending decisions, these need to be legislated or agreed upon by a majority vote in both the House and the Senate. While both a Trump and a Harris presidency are expected to be fiscally expansionary given their respective slates of policy proposals, their macro implications, so what this means for growth, what it means for inflation, what it means for monetary policy, and therefore what it means for investment markets, this is really, really, uncertain. Of course, a Trump presidency would also have significant economic implications for other countries including here at home in Australia, in the event that his tariff proposals are implemented. So, the one certainty that we can take away from this is that at least up until the election result is known, hopefully on the 6th of November, market uncertainty and volatility is going to remain higher than normal.

Thanks Amber, and thanks for running us through what we think may lay ahead. Now to Nick, as a Financial Planner, like me, you talk to members. What are some of the feedback that you're hearing from members around investments and investment choices?

Sure, so look from a Planners perspective Peter, we certainly do deal with clients day-to-day regarding a range of considerations. One of which is indeed investment approach and that sort of flows on more so into discussions around performance and managing risk. As we've seen in this webinar and from returns last financial year, AustralianSuper did finish strongly positive. More broadly much of the feedback in my experience from clients on the ground has been positive given greater than return, greater than expected returns in many areas. We have some clients however that do note, that there appear to be differences in returns from one fund to another. Particularly on the upside last financial year and rightly raised this sort of item for discussion. However, as recently as last week, the discussion changed significantly, again to one of managing volatility and negative runs. Look for mine, I suppose any discussion around performance, up or down is a good thing. It's an opportunity to refocus on why at the client level, we set an investment approach, that's designed to consider things like volatility, set some broad range expectation and identify the time frame for the investor.

Yeah and I suppose it's that objective and expectations that sometimes don't marry up. When you're talking to members, what are the pointers, or the start points for them to consider when choosing their investment options?

Look, there a range of items at the individual level for us to consider, we've listed a few here first of all when we come to compare returns, fund to fund, it's important to ensure we're comparing investment options that are similar in their growth exposure. That is, returns from one fund's default investment option to another can vary considerably based on the level of growth assets held. Now, growth assets are things like shares here, overseas property, infrastructure and so on and these are a big driver of long-term performance. So, small differences in growth allocation can mean a big difference in performance outcomes. Single year returns can also be a distraction, considering that you invest wealth for such a long time. Whilst I'd love big returns every year with no risk, this simply isn't an option, it's a unicorn. A consistency of approach will help manage longer term performance as its time in the market, not timing the market or trying to pick winners, that generally matters most. Sadly, no one tells us what the returns for the financial year will be at the start of the year. Third, understanding investing and performance as an extension is an emotive process that can swing from elation in good time, to panic and bad this has been proven in the week just gone. The emotional ride is a natural response but that needs to be managed by setting and understanding expectations. So, setting a risk theme or an investment approach and sticking to it over time helps to manage emotional swings and does tend to return focus back to the longer-term perspective. And fourth, AustralianSuper as with many funds has a wide range of investment options available for you to pick and choose as desired. You have choice over how you manage your super, be that cautious, aggressive or somewhere in between, so being engaged matters. These options vary in the diversified arena from stable, which is about 35% growth assets, to high growth which is a little over 80% growth assets, to things like sector funds such as Australian or international shares and even to direct stock. It's important to realise that they all have different return objectives and risk levels.

Suppose Nick, it's knowing if I'm the member what my attitude towards risk. In our chat we do have a link to a risk profile calculator that might help you determine, what type of investor you are. Now as a Financial Planner, you provide financial advice, now it's not something that many Australians do. Many Australians take the approach of she'll be right when thinking about their retirement but if members do want advice. How can they get it from AustralianSuper?

To look or to learn more about the options Peter, you can visit the website and initially and probably have a bit of a look through the investment guide, the materials are a terrific place to start. If you need help to work out which option is perhaps best for you, which investment option is best for you, AustralianSuper offer a range of service points to assist. Now, having a look on screen here we can see that the top two cover what I'd say is general and educational material initially. There's a very wide array of information available on the website to help improve both general knowledge and conceptual understanding. On the bottom left we can see the phone-based advice team, this is a team that can help decide the right investment option for you, this type of advice through the phone team comes at no additional cost to you as a member. The bottom right is comprehensive Financial Planners, those are people such as myself and there's 15 or so of me scattered around the country. We deal with investment selection as part of a broader sweat of advice needs and charge for the advice depending on scope, complexity and so on. Now if you're unsure, feel free to contact the fund and seek support and how we can triage your needs and move you to the right person or area to help.

Thanks Nick and if you are interested in learning more about your super there are a range of webinars at different times throughout the year, so you can tune in for them from the comfort of your home or wherever you may be, and you can find more out about those if you go to Australiansuper.com/webinars.

Now, in the chat we have put a link to a survey, which would love you to complete as it helps us tailor these webinars to what you want to know. It also gives you the opportunity to request financial follow up if need be.

That brings us to the end of the presentation part. Questions have been coming in thick and fast, and my colleagues behind the scenes have been answering those feverishly. There’s a couple there that I've been keeping an eye on, that’s a bit of a trend. So, I'll go with those first.

And the first one is to you Nick. I see this a lot. Should I change investment options if I'm moving into retirement? Good question and one that’s raised reasonably frequently. The answer for mine is probably a bit of yes and no. I’d initially want to start by making sure we know what sort of investment option you're in now and what that actually looks and feels like. What's the growth allocation and what sort of risk can we expect from that type of approach.

You often find that changing to a more conservative approach in retirement is considered by many the next logical step. But, we do still need to consider that retirement is a long-term gain. As I mentioned it, possibly 80s or 90s. So, that sort of time frame will impact decision-making, as you still need to weight towards growth assets in some manner to manage wealth productively over that time. On the ground, at a planning level. I tend to find clients normally maintain a fairly consistent or similar approach over time, into retirement in particular. Once we’ve established what sort of approach may suit them.

Thanks, Nick. One for you Amber. You spoke about elections all around the world. How about closer to home and an election in Australia, which I think has got to happen in the next 12 months or so?

Yes, that's right. There’s likely to be a federal election here in Australia by May next year. On this, I can make a couple of broad points. Firstly, Australia's political structure and rules, and this includes compulsory voting and proportional representation, these have a tendency to draw parties to the centre. So what happens here is that we don’t typically see some of the more radical policies that are being proposed elsewhere in the world.

And to this point, thus far there’s little in the way of controversial potential fiscal policies likely to be proposed, such as what we’ve seen for instance in large advanced economies around tariffs or taxes that we’ve seen proposed in France or the US for instance. Another factor to consider is that our markets are also significantly influenced by events on global markets. And so, as we’ve spoken about today markets don’t like uncertainty. And in our mind, It’s hard to see the opportunities for a large policy surprise. So even a large positive policy surprise. Say a kin to the significant deregulatory reforms of the 1980s for instance. It’s hard to see something like this being part of the upcoming election campaigning here.

Thanks, Amber. Now, Sam, I won’t leave you out of the questions here. A question has come in about, you mentioned before AustralianSuper’s balanced option is an active manager. What about indexed investments. What can you tell us about indexed investments? How do they perform short-term, long-term?

A good place to start for that would be basically defining the terms of what they mean. So, with indexing. Indexing is a passive way to invest, where you seek to match a benchmark. So you are seeking to match say the return of the ASX 200 or perhaps the MSCI World Index globally. So, often times passive investing or index investing could come at a lower cost because effectively the cost of setting up indexing is to build out systems to match that benchmark performance. So it’s seeking to match that index.

Where as active investing, you’re basically doing research or hiring investment managers that are picking securities to potentially outperform an index. So it really comes down to, in your own portfolio, determining which approach works for you. And it’s not a one or the other, you can actually have a mix of both types of styles in your portfolio. In AustralianSuper, we do believe in active investing and we have done very well over the long term. Some examples would be our Australian shares option, when you compare the returns of our Australian shares and our security selection approach there and its performance versus the benchmark, we have done very well. It’s also a key part of how our balanced option has performed. If you look over 10, 15, 20 years a large part of our outperformance is due to our active approach.

Thanks, Sam. And look, you touched on one thing there, that you don’t have to have all your eggs in the one basket. When it comes to the investment options available, we have about a dozen different options. You don’t have to be in just one, you can be spread across all of the dozen if you wish.

So, similar question back to you Nick. What are a planner’s thoughts on indexed or active?

Yeah, that’s a good one. Sam has already spoken to the DNA of each. But for a planner's mind I’d be best starting with the question of what level of risk the individual is prepared to accept. Indexed diversified has a strong performance history depending on what sort of time frame you’re referencing. But the nature of that option is to replicate the index. Which means it can be limited somewhat in terms diversification and active management. As it doesn’t necessarily manage the downs or volatility, it tries to replicate a relevant market in some fashion. It’s similar in growth allocation to balanced. There is limited allocation however beyond shares, fixed interest and cash, So in good periods for those assets, particularly around shares, Australian and and international stock, it’ll do very well. If both of those are struggling the downside tends to extend beyond a probably better diversified approach that’s holding some additional sort of active management and diversification. The balanced option does have the benefit of investing in things like unlisted assets, private equity, and infrastructure, which tend to have helped enhance performance overtime. But with that being said we're all different and each different options or combination there of may have its appeal depending on the individual and their needs.

Yeah, you’re right Nick, everyone is different, and we don’t have a one-size-fits-all. This is where that advantage of getting that personal advice can tailor something not only your comfortable with but he's also going to achieve the objective you're asking for.

Back to you Amber, I’m sorry I’ve got to stay on politics. This has come up a few times. What may a Trump presidency mean for returns? I know it’s fairly broad.

And very topical though Peter.

To be clear, we don’t place bets on the outcomes of elections. What we do try and do is research a lot to try and understand what might happen under different outcomes in order to help us manage risk. So, for example Donald Trump has a few key policy proposals that if there enacted would have really big economic impacts. And for example, I spoke previously about his policy proposals on tariffs. So these are a generalised 10% tariff rate on all goods imports into the US. And a 60% import tariff from China. So in insolation, if enacted these tariffs would work to lower economic growth and increase inflation in the US, which isn’t great for equity markets. However, Trump has also promised to cut the corporate tax rate, which would work to improve profitability for businesses, And therefore boost equities. Ultimately, what we should expect if Trump gains office is more volatility in asset markets as Trump works to implement his policy agenda. And noting here that it’s a very different one from the existing Biden policy agenda, and also what Harris is currently campaigning on.

Another couple of questions have come through that I think I can handle at this stage. Is it ever too late to get advice? No it's not. Is it ever too late to get involved in your super? No it isn't. The more you engage in your super the more options you will have. And getting that financial advice is key and also understanding what investment options are available and which of those options are going to best suit you.

I’m going to wrap it up here. We have come to the end of our allotted time. We’ve had many thousands of people join, we’ve had it seems like thousands of questions asked. So, my thanks goes to the team behind the scenes answering those questions as we’ve been going through the webinar. Thanks to you, Sam, Amber, and Nick for giving us your expertise.

Over what we find, or most members find, is the biggest driver of satisfaction with a super fund is how a fund is performing. And thank you for the explanations of what the numbers were, how we got to those numbers, where those numbers may be leading in the future. And certainly, from Nick’s point, how can you get all those numbers to line up to give you the best result.

Apologies if we didn’t get to your question. As I've said we've had thousands of questions coming through we can’t get to all of them.

There’s a lot more information available on the AustralianSuper website, at australiansuper.com across the top of the landing page there are various sections you can select depending on whether your questions continuing on investments, whether it’s on super, whether you’re looking at retirement. We have fact sheets. We have education sessions to help you understand your super a little bit more. So we can give you and this is what we strive to do at AustralianSuper, we want to put you in a better financial place when you do get to retirement whenever that would be. So thank you for giving up your time today. We've enjoyed presenting this to you, hopefully we will see you again next year. And as we've said hindsight is a wonderful thing when it comes to investing. It’s easy to make decisions after something's happened. But it's easier to make better decisions by getting help and advice along the way.

Thank you and have a great afternoon.