2025 - Year in review

2025 was a nice year for the portfolio.

My goal here is to look back on the year in order to:

• Understand what contributed to my performance.
• Gain some insights into how I can sustain or improve performance

Performance contribution by symbols (extracted from IBKR)

(data was extracted on 27 Dec, but no major fluctuations in returns since)

• Stocks contribution: 68.64% (square on the right)
• Options (equity) contribution: 26.99% (square on the left)
• Other inconsequential amounts are from ETFs, futures options, warrants, cash

Sorted by size, it becomes more obvious that just a handful of names contributed to the majority of returns. These names, in no particular order, were: BABA, MIN (ASX), SBSW, SLV, SSL, UNH. Common theme here is that these were very unloved prior to making big moves.

Losses were fairly controlled. I attribute this to cutting losses more quickly, but for the sake of balance, the names with the biggest losses were: BAK, BTU, NBIS, TQQQ, U.UN, UUUU, XPEV. Common theme with these losses I attribute mostly to poor entries (i.e. impatience/chasing) and entering trades in which I am not as familiar with the fundamental story/thematic. Many of these were also more volatile names, which I am not as used to trading.

Performance contribution by symbols (after removing top 5 and bottom 5 contributing names)

While the outliers are nice, and I will continue to try to capture and trade around the big moves, I also want to look deeper at my trades in between. After removing the top and bottom 5 contributing symbols, I am left with the distribution below.

Net contribution from these trades is 26% (Positive contributors: 46%, Negative contributors: 20%). Nice to see that it is positive. However, looking more closely at the individual names, the same mistakes appear:

• Poor entries - either due to chasing breakouts, or not giving an extra few days for confirmation of buying support
• Not locking in profits quickly and round tripping (especially for options)
• Using very tight stops for positions/names I have high conviction in (and also entering at poor areas where I am unable to get decent size)

Finding the right themes

If I were to pick one thing to do right, at least from the perspective of profits, it would be to have exposure to the most bullish themes. A few that I had exposure to: precious metals, Chinese stocks, healthcare. Some big ones I missed: copper, aluminum, AI, space... and too many others. This is probably the number one thing to work on next year.

Consolidating accounts, and taking a more active approach

In previous years, I split my portfolio into two - one for longer term positions, and another for shorter term trades. This caused a bit of confusion in terms of execution, which I feel very likely hindered my performance in both.

This year, I decided to focus on just one style, which was to essentially buy and trade around stocks that I like from a fundamental perspective. I think regularly closing positions for profit also allowed me to think more clearly (in terms of price action), and allowed me to re-allocate capital to positions with better near term risk/reward. That said, impatience is probably still my biggest weakness, and I still have a lot of work to do to further reduce future drawdowns (max drawdown this year was 13.8%).

Also, despite consolidating accounts, there was (and still is) quite a bit of inner conflict when it came to wanting to realize gains in names that I like fundamentally. The way I have approached this is to have rules around where to exit. This is either when the position has reached a certain percentage gain, or a fixed dollar amount - but obviously will also have a subjective element whereby I consider the strength of the trend/theme, and level of conviction. Sometimes I will close partial, sometimes the full position. If I'm really honest, the rules are more like guidelines, and I may need to refine this further, but so far, having these numbers in mind as a guide has definitely helped me with selling into strength.

Trade expression

I started to express more trades via options. This tended to work best when very patient, and it contributed nicely to the bottom line.

Also started to think more about getting exposure to themes via different vehicles, e.g. deciding whether to get exposure to a commodity theme via the underlying commodity itself, producers, or options on either one. As an example, oil is weak now, and some oil producing companies with low production costs are trading towards the bottom of their ranges, but still cash flow positive and supported by dividends. If I get LEAPS leaps here, and if oil is to turn, return is likely to be quite asymmetric.

In summary

This was a great year for me, but many of the same mistakes I have suffered from in the past are still present. A few things I need to do better in 2026:

• Spend more time identifying and tracking themes, and looking for best r/r entries
• Patience
  • Wait for clear buying support on the daily before rushing into positions
  • Buy at the bottom of structures, instead of at breakouts / new highs
• Taking profits
  • Options - be faster in realizing profits
  • Stocks
    • Whenever sitting on unrealized gains and feeling extra bullish, lock in at least a portion of the gains, trail any remainders, while waiting for the pullback. Constantly remind myself that price does not go up in a straight line, and I may miss a couple of runners, but I should come out ahead overall.
    • If market/themes are very extended, and I am sitting on nice profits on the portfolio as a whole - lock in profits (or at least trim) and wait for prices to pullback. Don't need to have too much exposure all the time - only press when entries are in my favour.
• Risk
  • Continue to cut positions that aren't working well
  • Size appropriately
• Use stops, especially in more volatile names