Q3 2025 – Investment Performance Report
We live increasingly in a world that often feels full of doom and gloom. This geopolitical, economic and social noise in the media risks becoming deafening and unsettling. What will Trump do or say next? Will the West be able to contain Putin’s imperialist ambitions? Are taxes going to rise in the Budget? Is the economy heading for a slump?
As investors, this immediate, loud and relentless noise can begin to chip away at our fortitude and confidence in the markets. ‘What if’ scenarios race through our heads. Unfortunately, the reality of being an investor is that it always feels a little uncomfortable. We cannot predict the future, and our outcomes are uncertain, particularly in the short-term.
When markets have risen strongly, as they have over the past three years, and the negative noise is loud, it is easy to begin to feel that markets may well fall. Likewise, when markets have fallen, the news and outlook often feel grim. Putting more money into the markets feels like the wrong thing to do. The temptation is to get rid of this negative emotional pressure and take money out of the markets. That is rarely, if ever, a good solution.
An eventful beginning to President Trump’s second term culminated in April with ‘Liberation Day’, introducing the ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on imports into the US. The tariffs had been announced in advance and had been the focus of speculation in the weeks before, but they still turned out to be far worse than expected. Initial reaction from equity markets was negative, but six months on, the lack of retaliation to higher US tariffs has helped global markets recover.
Despite wars, recessions, pandemics, and political upheaval, capitalist economies have consistently delivered long-term wealth to investors who stay the course, harnessing the power of human ingenuity and enterprise to turn capital into opportunity. Global developed markets have, for example, averaged around 5% above inflation since the turn of the last century. That’s not luck but the result of thousands of companies competing, innovating, and growing under a capitalist framework and overcoming the shorter-term doom and gloom that the world has always and will always continue to suffer.
We have reported below on the third quarter of 2025.
9th October 2025
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Gavin Jones See profile
The risk you have chosen to take with your investments continues to determine the investment journey. In the very near term, those with higher risk tolerances have seen bigger gains than those taking less risk in their portfolios. Performance at the end of July showed a degree of nervousness as the 1 August deadline for tariffs approached but passed largely without incident. While we report on the shorter-term performance, the nature of investing is much longer-term, in years, not days and weeks. Longer-term performance is shown later in this article.
Over the course of the last year, despite the falls seen in April, portfolio returns have been positive. While in the short-term, higher risk investments have performed much better than lower risk assets, in the graph above, you can clearly see the benefit of lower risk portfolios in a falling market. In February 2025, you can see Portfolio 80, falling over 13% before recovering with strong growth of over 9% from this time last year. For those who have chosen to take a lower risk with their investments, February saw only falls of 3% but the price of this is lower growth over the year.
The ten-year returns illustrate the value of investing over the longer term. It also highlights that in pursuing higher returns, there will be periods of volatility that call for patience and trust in the investment process. Nowhere did we see this more than in the early days of the Covid pandemic in spring 2020, where markets saw a sharp fall over February and March before staging a recovery to the previous peak over the next five months.
Values portfolios have seen similar strong returns to standard portfolios over the period.
Performance over the last year for Values portfolios has been slightly lower but still positive when compared to the original portfolios, with the Environmental, Social and Governance screened global equity fund rebounding quickly.
Longer-term performance over 10 years (up to Monday 30 September 2025)
The Values portfolios have only been available to our investors for the last five years, but the graph below shows the longer time frame of ten years, showing the potential upside over longer periods.
Longer-term performance of the Values portfolios shows robust growth.
The table below shows the performance of a number of asset classes in 2025 so far and the annualised return over the last five years as at close of play on Tuesday 30 September.
