2025 Year in Review

Part I: Investment Returns

2025 was a good year for investors, even better than 2024 which was already pretty good. Even though only SCB and IBKR give me YTD returns, based on some rough estimates, 2025 is the first year I have achieved $1m+ in capital gain from investments. This does not mean that I only picked winners as I have losers like NVO and NKE which are nursing 5-figure losses. Nevertheless, as a value investor I still believe in them so I continue to hold.

For 2025, my IBKR portfolio returned an amazing 29.04% while my Standard Chartered Portfolio gained 20.11%, lagging the STI (Simply Terrible Index). My SCB portfolio holds a lot of SREITs like FLCT and Capland Ascott which underperformed the STI so underperformance this year was expected. Finally, my FSMOne account holds my HK/China ETFs that I have been diligently doing RSP (I couldn't bear to look at the losses so I needed to automate the RSP). The 4 ETFs that I RSP have all exceeded 30% (google finance doesn't add in the dividends). The fact that they all converged is pretty suspicious (window dressing) but I'll take the win.

Part II: Health is Wealth

Every year you will see bloggers in their year-end review post talking about taking care of health. I fully believe in this and I constantly review this. 

So far, everything is good. Most important to me is that I didn't get injured because I took a cautious approach to training. I hope to carefully increase my training volume in 2026.

Even though I am no longer eligible for IPPT, I use the age 39 IPPT standard (which is the last year I did IPPT before MR at age 40) as a benchmark and I can achieve a gold standard on push ups, sit-ups and 2.4km. Additionally, I can still achieve the gold standard chin-up of minimum 12 (chin-ups were part of IPPT when I did my BMT).

In terms of areas of improvement, my Total Cholesterol is borderline in the 190-195 range, though APO-B is all clear. 

Part III: Other Financial Milestones

In 2025 I applied for my second credit card, the UOB Krisflyer Credit Card. (Ignoring credit cards with lifetime fee waiver that were given to me which I don't use but keep in case of emergencies - the OCBC Frank card and OCBC Visa Infinite).

As I am travelling more, I finally decided to be more deliberate in my spending so that I can get some miles to redeem for flights. 2025 was also the year of credit card nerfs, so careful attention to credit card caps is needed more than ever.

Despite the fact that I talk about SQ business class flights, in 2025, I only went on one business class flight as I had only one trip that was >7 hours. All the other trips I took, mainly to Japan, were shorter than that and I didn't see the point of business class, especially since Krisflyer Elite Gold gave me priority check-in and security clearance and lounge access at Japanese airports. I have let my KFEG expire but I should requalify in 2026 as I plan to take more than 1 business class flight next year.

Part IV: Looking Ahead

I have no idea what to expect in 2026. I thought 2025 would be a solid single digit gain and was surprised by what happened. I planned to stay invested and to continue to invest cautiously in 2026. Happy New Year!