Morningstar’s Australian Institutional Sector Survey found that the S&P/ASX300 Index recorded a 2.5 per cent return, lifting the result for the first two months of the new financial year to 8.0 per cent.
“The solid start to the financial year for Australian shares continued over the month of August,” Morningstar said. “Other growth assets did not perform well. Global property fell 5.5 per cent, international shares [by] 1.5 per cent and Australian listed property was down 0.2 per cent over the month.”
Growth shares outperformed the value index over the months, with the S&P Australia BMI Growth Index returning 3.2 per cent compared to 1.9 per cent.
However, the value index performed more strongly over the year, recording 26.3 per cent compared to the 19.7 per cent result from the growth index.
Morningstar’s Australian Superannuation Survey found that the median growth superannuation fund returned 0.4 per cent for August.
“Results ranged from a low of 0.01 per cent to a high of 1.22 per cent,” Morningstar said. “Longer-term annualised results for the median growth fund were 17.2 per cent (1 year), 8.9 per cent (3 years), 4.5 per cent (5 years), and 6.7 per cent (10 years to 31 August 2013).”
The best-performing growth superfunds over the year to August 31 were Legg Mason Growth at 27.7 per cent, Legg Mason Balanced at 24.9 per cent and Maple-Brown Abbott at 21.0 per cent.
Legg Mason Growth and Legg Mason Balanced funds also had the highest allocations to Australian shares at 48.4 per cent and 42.4 per cent respectively.
