Off the back of an 18 per cent gain in the 2020-21 financial year, median growth superannuation funds returned an increase of 1.1 per cent in July.

Chant West’s senior investment research manager, Mano Mohankumar, said funds have clearly picked up from where they left off last financial year.

“It’s a solid start, and a continuation of the remarkable bounce-back we’ve seen over the past 16 months,” the researcher noted.

Since the low points witnessed at the end of March last year, when the markets crashed, the superannuation funds have returned members an “astonishing” 27 per cent, Mr Mohankumar highlighted.

“Not only have we recovered all the losses incurred in the early COVID period, but we’re now sitting about 12 per cent above the pre-COVID crisis high that was reached at the end of January 2020,” he continued.

Explaining that the strong July results were influenced by another positive month for shares, Mr Mohankumar noted that the Australian dollar played a big part.

“International shares were up 1.7 per cent in hedged terms, but that was boosted to 4 per cnet in unhedged terms because of the depreciation of the Australian dollar over the month (down from US$0.75 to US$0.73),” he said.

“In the US, a strong company earnings reporting season overshadowed concerns about rising COVID case numbers, the sustainability of economic momentum and the recent developments in China.

“In the eurozone, vaccine rollouts accelerated in Germany, Italy and Spain, which provided hope that further lockdowns might be avoided despite increasing cases of the delta variant,” Mr Mohankumar explained.

Additionally, back home, Australian shares, which increased by 1.1 per cent over the month of July, acted as a tailwind for the funds.

The researcher pointed out that overall superannuation funds ranging from all growth to conservative have reached their benchmarks ranging from CPI +2 per cent for conservative to CPI +4.25 per cent for all growth.