2025 1H Update: 11% Gain Despite A Crazy 1H

I think most would agree with me that 2025 1H is kinda crazy.

The market had one of the worst drawdowns in recent years in the February to March period, but eventually closed 1H in the positive territory.

Many investors were going on a selling spree to build up their cash pile during those months to weather through a supposedly difficult storm. Little did most realise that the storm ended before it even really started.

Yet again, time in the market beats timing the market.

I wasn’t so positive about returns in 2025. If you read my previous post, I wasn’t expecting a strong double digit return this year like the previous years.

So it’s really a surprise to me that I managed to end 1H with a 11% gain in my portfolio.

And of course, I continue to beat the market over a 54 month period.

Here is an overview of my portfolio performance.

2025 Performance YTD

My Portfolio: 11.04%

Vanguard 500 Index: 6.05%

Performance since inception (Jan 2021)

My Portfolio: 84.4%

Vanguard 500 Index: 70.1%

(Based on an arbitrary starting amount of $10,000)

Q2 has been a rather good quarter with a ~7% gain. None of the 3 months ended negative.

The index has an even better Q2 though with a more than 10% gain.

With my portfolio already returning a 84.4% return in 54 months, I will be counting to a 100% return. Hopefully it won’t take too long and will materialise by the end of 2025. That could mean that the portfolio value essentially doubled in less than 5 years.

For an overview of the YTD performance of the constituents in my portfolio, please refer to the below table.

(Source: https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio#analysisResults) 

It’s nice to see all the constituents in my portfolio in black. It’s a pretty good sight to see non in the red.

The poor performers in the past years like ARKK and Alibaba have had a good run in 2025 so far and their gains have been outpacing the other constituents in my portfolio.

I was honestly expecting Bitcoin to have much better returns so it’s a little disappointing to see that it has only managed to have a 14.67% return in 1H. I know such returns are nothing to scoff at but I’m just expecting more from Bitcoin.

BRK.B was having really decent returns early this year until Warren Buffett announced his stepping down as a CEO at the end of the year. What was then dubbed as the “Buffett premium” to the stock was then removed and the returns became a little more tamed. The fact that Berkshire Hathaway has also paused its share buyback for a while also left investors waiting on the sideline.

URTH remains to be the rock in the portfolio and churn out a respectable ~9% return. Given the turmoil that is happening in the states right now, it does make sense to be more diversified and invest in something more global. I of course understand that most global ETFs have a high concentration in the U.S. market. That is expected given that the U.S market is still the dominant market by far. Despite this, I believe that a global ETF is still a better bet than being fully invested in just the U.S market.

All in all, it is a pretty solid quarter. The only downside will be the fall of the dollar. The greenback has fallen more than 10% in value this year relative to the Singapore dollar. This is temporarily eroding the gains in my portfolio. Honestly, there isn’t really a good way to hedge against such currency risks for retail investors like us. You could of course invest in currency-hedged ETFs but I find it perhaps a bit too excessive for retail investors. Another way is to perhaps invest more in your local market but I just don’t find any bright spots in the local market worth investing at the moment. Over a long term period, the currency risks should work itself out unless the greenback starts on a multi-year decline from here on.

With a decent 11% return in 1H, I am certainly looking forward to ending the year with a >20% return like 2023 and 2024. Fingers crossed.

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