2025 Q3 Update: 21.3% YTD Gain And Beating The Market

datascienceinvestor
16 minutes ago
2 min read

Q3 ends up being the best quarter for my portfolio. Same as Q2, there isn't a red month.

This is quite surprising given that September is usually a notorious villain. However, this September ends up being the best September for the stock market in 15 years.

In fact, it's the second best month for my portfolio this year.

Here is an overview of my portfolio performance.

2025 Performance YTD

My Portfolio: 21.38%

Vanguard 500 Index: 14.71%

Performance since inception (Jan 2021)

My Portfolio: 95.8%

Vanguard 500 Index: 87.9%

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

I continue to beat the market in 2025 and also on an almost 5-year horizon basis.

What's also encouraging is that the initial sum is now almost doubled after 4 years and 9 months in the market.

If all goes well, I should be able to double the initial sum by the end of Q4. This is an impressive result to me as I beat my own initial expectations of doubling in 7 years.

At the current momentum, I should be looking at a CAGR of >15% by the end of 2025.

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)

Alibaba has a fantastic run in September with a 32% return! That pushes its YTD returns to be 112.5%.

Similarly, ARKK has had an impressive run in 2025 so far too with a +52% return YTD.

For those who are following this blog, you all could have noticed that I have been looking into trimming my stakes in China equities and ARK ETFs in recent years. With such returns this year, I am looking into removing them entirely in my portfolio very soon.

While a 22% return is nothing to scoff at, such a return seems to be a little low for Bitcoin. Q4 has traditionally been a good quarter for Bitcoin so I am having some conviction that we will see a new ATH in Bitcoin prices very soon.

While the returns in the market have been very encouraging so far, I am not delusional to believe that this will last forever. I know that this impressive run will come to a halt or hit a wall eventually.

Nonetheless, I will remain invested in the market. Just like what I did during the lows in the past 4 years and 9 months.

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