The investment chief of AustralianSuper, Melbourne, brushed off concerns about volatility sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade wars, even as the country’s superannuation industry maintains its massive exposure to global stocks.
Australia’s largest super, with A$365 billion ($229 billion) under management, sees market volatility under the Trump administration playing out largely as expected, said Chief Investment Officer Mark Delaney. He expressed confidence in the fund’s ability to absorb shocks going forward.
“Last year, some of our team wrote a paper saying that they thought the first six months of the Trump presidency was likely to introduce considerable volatility,” Delaney told the Asia Pacific Financial and Innovation Symposium in Melbourne on March 25. “It’s turned out exactly that way.”
Australia’s A$4.2 trillion supers industry has shown a growing appetite for offshore assets, with about a third of their investments now in global equities. While that helped power returns of 11.5% last year, funds lost an average 0.8% in February as markets were upended by tariff threats, according to research house SuperRatings.
That “volatility has been within the context of a pretty solid underlying economic backdrop,” Delaney said. “So the ability to absorb it is quite substantial. Looking forward, you wouldn’t expect the volatility to go away.”
Delaney’s comments come just weeks after the CIO and other representatives of Australia’s biggest pension funds launched a U.S. charm offensive. They met with members of Trump’s administration, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, as well as state governors and investment managers.
