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.
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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 150,000 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.
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)
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