2025 Review, 2026 Preview And Bob

It is that time of the year again where we will go through what had happened the past year, what may happen the next year, and some updates on our hypothetical investor Bob.

Picture generated by ChatGPT

2025 Review

Going through the usual markets which I cover annually, the S&P500 had returned +17.86% year-to-date (YTD) while, surprisingly, the Straits Times Index (STI) returned higher at +22.41%, and reaching an all-time high of above 4,600 points as at the close of Christmas Eve.

The STI, often seen as a laggard and bypassed by some local investors, saw a period of happy days over the past year, to which in my view was partially attributed to capital flowing from other parts of the world to our deemed safe haven markets.

The best story for this year comes not from equities, properties or bonds, but from gold and silver, which both have a place in The Bedokian Portfolio. The news of debasement of the United States dollar coupled with the increased use of silver in industrial (and political) use resulted in a spike of the two precious metals’ prices mainly in the second half of the year, with gold and silver having +70.64%¹ and +143.01%¹ YTD respectively, beating the aforementioned equities indices.

HACK, IPAY & ICLN

Since last year, I have included a section in my year-end posts highlighting the three sectors/industries: cybersecurity, payment solutions, and clean energy, represented by the exchange traded funds (ETFs) HACK, IPAY, and ICLN, respectively, in which we are vested in. The table below (Fig. 1) shows the ETFs’ YTD performance for the whole of 2025 (up till 24 Dec 2025) and the compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) from 1 Jan 2018 to 30 Nov 2025 (nominal and inflation adjusted) since I had espoused them in 2017.

 

ETF	2025 YTD (till 24 Dec 2025)	Nominal CAGR (1 Jan 2018 to 30 Nov 2025)2	Inflation Adjusted CAGR (1 Jan 2018 to 30 Nov 2025)2
HACK	+9.99%	+13.51%	+9.74%
IPAY	-8.17%	+5.43%	+1.93%
ICLN	+45.06%	+9.37%	+5.73%

 

Fig.1: YTD and CAGR nominal and inflation adjusted returns of HACK, IPAY and ICLN

2026 Preview

Amongst the boomtown happenings, we also heard about economists and analysts projecting a market downturn next year, amplified by news of layoffs (happened and projected) and increasing unemployment numbers. The constant push and pull of conciliatory and retaliatory trade measures between the two largest economies, the United States and China, brought about more uncertainty that ironically in my opinion, the resulting rise of our local stock market.

Whether good times or bad are forecasted, it is important to note that we cannot really tell what lies ahead, but it is equally important to stay invested and diversified; diversification after all is the first line of defence against market uncertainty.

Bob

I had just realised Bob’s portfolio did not show up as it should be on the blog page, hence going forward I will transfer the portfolio and post it as a static table form after rebalancing on 2 Jan 2026 with an SGD 5,000 cash injection.

Anyway, Bob’s portfolio value is now close to SGD 160,000 and had collected almost SGD 4,600 in dividends. Also, I would be changing Bob’s REIT ETF to another after considering the other ETF’s fund size and liquidity, so stay tuned after 2 Jan 2026 for the reveal of Bob’s portfolio.

Onward to 2026!

Disclosure

The Bedokian is vested in HACK, IPAY and ICLN.

Disclaimer

All figures are from Yahoo Finance as of 25 Dec 2025 unless otherwise stated.

1 – TradingView (accessed 25 Dec 2025)

2 – Portfolio Visualizer, HACK, IPAY and ICLN between 1 Jan 2018 to 30 Nov 2025 (accessed 25 Dec 2025) 

Is Such Knowledge Really Necessary?

 A few days ago, someone had posed me this question:

“Is it necessary to know all these before starting to invest?”

Picture generated by Meta AI

By “all these”, the person was referring to a blogpost I made back in 2021 (link here), where I had introduced a structured and holistic guideline to learn investing. An acquaintance of mine, after reading the post, then asked the above question. The viewpoint provided was that such knowledge was deemed too overwhelming and not suitable for people who may not have the aptitude to grasp the concepts.

Honestly, this was not the first time I was queried on it, so I am writing this post providing my viewpoints and use the link as my answer in case anyone asking me again in future.

No doubt it is a daunting task to go through the structured learning guideline on how to go about investing, in my opinion it is important to know what one is getting into. Whenever I embark on a learning journey on a topic, my preference is to know the underlying concepts, or at least the basic understanding of the whole works, and with it, further related information would be easier to catch on to and eventually the learning would become more gradual.

Besides knowing what one is doing on the investment front, the possession of the know-how also serves as a bulwark against fishy investment/trading schemes. Oftentimes there were news reports of people falling for investing frauds which, upon critical thinking and questioning, would have been avoided.

It is not difficult to start learning on investing, for it is akin to learning other new skills and hobbies like cycling and pickleball. The availability of generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and Gemini makes learning easier nowadays (though some caution and basic fact finding is still needed for this). The choice of learning is there, whether one wants to have the effort to take it up.

Let It Go

Picture generated by Meta AI

We recently sold a dividend stock at a loss. Initially, we bought it in July 2017 after reviewing its strong financials and solid fundamentals (such as price-to-book ratio, gearing, and revenue). When COVID hit in 2020, we purchased more shares as prices dropped, anticipating a rebound once the crisis passed—especially since the company is connected to tourism. The stock did recover somewhat, but after 2022 it began to decline again and has stayed weak since. Additionally, the dividend yield kept decreasing each year, eventually falling near to the 10-year annual inflation average of 1.75%¹.

In total, we incurred a -32.6% loss based on our entry and exit prices, made worse by the stock’s wide spread and low liquidity, which meant selling at the bid price. Even after accounting for the dividends we received, the overall outcome was still negative at -21.3%. The good thing was the company share represented only at 0.4% of our total Bedokian Portfolio value.

Cutting losses can be tough for investors, but it is often necessary to free up capital for better opportunities rather than letting funds stagnate. Potential price rebounds or dividend increases are not guaranteed. Instead of viewing one’s investment as hard-earned money lost, consider it as strategic capital to be redeployed effectively. This is one of the true marks of a rational investor.

Related post

Are You Mentally Prepared For Investing?

1 – MAS Core Inflation, 2015 to 2024. Monetary Authority of Singapore. 

Rebalancing: Adding Bond ETFs

While many investors and traders are focused on artificial intelligence counters, precious metals like gold and silver, or cryptocurrencies set for recovery, we are going contrarian and turning our attention elsewhere: bonds, specifically bond exchange traded funds (ETFs).

Picture generated by Meta AI

Although we remain opportunistic with other asset classes and sectors, taking positions when prices are favourable, the main portion of our upcoming portfolio additions will be allocated to bond ETFs. This may seem surprising, but from a holistic portfolio perspective, this contrarian approach plays an important role in rebalancing, which is essential for diversification.

Currently, bonds make up 12.7% of our portfolio. As previously discussed here, our target allocation for bonds is 15%, so we are aiming to increase our holdings nearer to that percentage figure.

We prefer bond ETFs over individual bonds because they offer easier management, greater diversification thanks to exposure to different issuers, better liquidity since ETFs are easily traded on markets, and lower transaction costs by dealing with one ETF instead of multiple individual bonds.

That said, we also hold some individual bonds such as Singapore Savings Bonds, which we intend to keep until maturity in order to benefit from their higher interest rates in specific tranches.

Disclaimer