KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
Until now it has been very difficult for SMSF trustees to know how their overall fund is actually performing
- You can’t benchmark against the ASX 200 in the media as this is just a price index. You may have made contributions or pension payments during the year so you have not had a consistent amount invested, and you probably earned dividends.
- Your fund probably has cash as well as shares and/or property. Even if the shares went well, your decision about how much to invest in Australian shares may have had more impact on your total fund return than any decision about which shares to invest in. So you have to benchmark your total fund performance.
- It’s not usually appropriate to benchmark against an Industry super fund or most ‘model portfolios’, because they probably invest differently to you.