Significant market movements
What happens when there’s a significant market movement?
QSuper’s unit prices are a reflection of the movement in the value of the portfolio’s underlying assets of two business days earlier. This means that movements in investment markets for a given day are incorporated into the unit price released to members two business days later.
A significant market movement is an abnormally large gain or loss within an investment option. When there's a significant market movement, there will be considerable difference between an option’s unit price and the option’s underlying asset value.
In accordance with industry best practice, QSuper protects members in the event of significant market movements by temporarily pausing transaction processing in the impacted options and deferring the release of unit prices. This pause is generally only a day or two in duration and enables us to accurately reflect the underlying asset values.
QSuper uses materiality thresholds to determine whether a significant market movement has occurred. A materiality threshold is the point at which a market movement has affected an option to a point that is deemed to be significant.
In setting the limits, the QSuper Board of Trustees has grouped the nine investment options into three categories shown in the table below. The materiality thresholds are:
| QSuper investment options |
Interday*
threshold |
Intraday**
threshold |
| Cash, Cash Plus, Fixed Interest |
1.0% |
1.5% |
| Balanced, Basic Growth, Socially Responsible |
2.0% |
3.0% |
| Australian Shares, International Shares, High Growth |
4.0% |
6.0% |
If the interday movement in an investment option is greater than the Board approved interday materiality threshold, a unit price will not be released for the next day until QSuper’s investment manager can calculate a price that incorporates the movement. Any further transaction processing in that option will be halted until a price is released.
If an intraday movement in an investment option is greater than the Board approved intraday materiality threshold, any further transaction processing in that option will be halted until QSuper’s investment manager can calculate a price that incorporates the movement.
When there are consecutive significant market movements in an investment option, all transaction processing in that option will be halted until QSuper’s investment manager can calculate a price that incorporates market movements.