Investing February 21, 2026 0 Comments

What If Every Top-Performing Stock Since 2025 Is Just One Giant Secret Trade Play? Find Out Before It Blows Up Your Portfolio!

Ever wonder why some investments seem to sprint ahead while others just jog along, even when they’re all supposedly playing on the same field? Since the start of 2025, I’ve charted five very different securities—the mix includes a non-US developed markets ETF, a systematically managed small-cap value fund, a local STI ETF, an emerging markets index, and even Singapore’s DBS stock—each staged against the US dollar. What’s striking is that despite their differences in strategy, region, and sector focus, they’ve marched in surprisingly similar steps. So, what’s really driving their performance? Is it deep value bargains, a weakening dollar, or just plain market coincidence? And more importantly, are we fooling ourselves when we attribute success to skill rather than circumstance? Getting tangled up in performance stories can lead to emotional whirlpools that nobody needs in their portfolio. Let’s unravel this together—because sometimes, the biggest insight is questioning what you think you already know. LEARN MORE

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Short post.

In the following chart I plotted out 5 different securities from the start of 2025:

The first one is an ETF of stocks that is non-US but developed markets.
The second one is the Avantis International Small Cap Value, which is a systematic active strategy on non-US developed small cap stocks but only selecting some of the cheapest and more profitable.
The third is our STI ETF, which is a pretty concentrated index.
The fourth is an emerging markets large, mid and small cap index.
The last is Singapore’s DBS stock

You can see the performance and they are all based to USD.

I also put them together so that you can compare against them, all in USD:

Those that are denominated in SGD will have better performance so that is adjusted.

What you would notice is that these are:

Pretty diverse regions.
One even with a systematic active strategy (which explains why it is doing better because it coincidentally overweighs the materials sector which happen to be cheaper)
A popular individual security.

And they seem to have the same performance since the start of 2025, or since liberation day.

I wonder what is people’s attribution of the performance. Is it because they are cheaper? Or USD is weaker and its better for them?

I could probably explain part of the better performance of the small cap value.

But if you attribute the performance wrongly, and you extrapolate that this area has good companies, or what caused the good performance is because your company is good, then you might need to be careful if this is the same trade and it unravels accordingly.

I would always say the better the performance can sometimes breeds a deeper anxiety, a feeling that you have to sell or fade this at some point.

The more you depend on a good performance, especially if it is concentrated, the more emotionally vulnerable you will be.

I invested in a diversified portfolio of exchange-traded funds (ETF) and stocks listed in the US, Hong Kong and London.

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