The value of a super account is sensitive to the share market. In retirement one usually wants dollars available in a consistent manner with a balance left after each withdrawal. Think capital preservation is job 1 when ‘it’ hits the fan (as it just did).
Most super accounts (balanced and slightly aggressive) have lost 20-30% of their value in the past 2 weeks. Has it reached the bottom yet? TBD. It may be years or even decades before accounts recover to their pre-crash valuations.
If you have an aggressive fund you might have lost 40-50% of the value almost overnight. Consider a long term rate of return of say 10% p.a. versus 5% pa for a more conservative fund - after the losses.
If I loose 20% and get 5% pa. back, compare that to losing 40% and getting 10% p.a. back.
eg for a balanced or slightly conservative fund,
$500,000 → $400,000 post crash
$20,000 pa added during the recovery (simplistically 5 years to recoup)
for the aggressive fund,
$500,000 → $300,000 post crash
$30,000 pa added during the recovery (simplistically 6.7 years to recoup)
/edit: obviously if all of the 'growth, 5% or 10% respectively in the above example, was drawn as a pension you would be ahead by $10,000 pa with the aggressive fund UNTIL the next crash or just a bad year. Since one wants it to last the rest of a lifetime it becomes a gamble how many bad years you can endure, and how the bad years coincide with your withdrawals or a lump sum if needed./
BUT you need funds in the interim so you would be withdrawing from the base of $400,000 or $300,000 respectively, elongating the time. If you needed a large sum today it would be taken from the lowest or close to the lowest amount available, leaving even less.
Does that explain it sufficiently?
OTOH, if you do not need the money, have other retirement income to cover all your expenses and wants, and are not withdrawing super, higher risk longer term investing might make sense with the long term horizon. However ‘our’ ages come into the equation. Is it a savings account or to fund retirement? How much of the account might be passed on to another?