YWR 2025 Performance Review
Was 2025 good for you?
That’s what’s important.
And that 2026 is as well.
How I do doesn’t really matter, except that:
We want to track which ideas are working, and what’s not.
I want it to be clear where I have positions, skin in the game, and what are just ideas.
A word on turnover. My turnover is super low (less than 5%). Partly, this is becoming my style, but also I want to make these portfolios easy to track for you. They don't jump around every other day.
In 2025 we bought 5 new positions (SK Hynix, Korea ETF, Nvidia, Amazon, and Meta) and sold one stock this year, InmuneBio, the biotech which was supposed to cure Alzheimers, but apparently is not. European Banks, Energy, Asia..these trends are meant to play out over years.
That said, we give thanks that 2025 went well.
We track two sub-portfolios (Dirty Dividends and Cash Dragons) which were + 79% and 50% respectively. Everything public (including all the index funds and GLD) was + 48%.
‘Dirty Dividends’
This started out in 2023 as a portfolio to buy all the anti-ESG sectors institutional investors didn’t want to own. Energy, Tobacco, Autos, and Banks. The Untouchables. They were all super high yielding, hence the name. With our Asia Pivot the portfolio is evolving, and it’s not as dirty, but I still like the name.
European Banks have been the gift which keeps on giving. The 2025 performance was insane. Santander (+130%), Commerzbank (+130%), Unicredit (+86%), Barclays (+80%). I wondered at the beginning of the year if the trend was done. The explosive net interest margin driven earnings revisions were over. Sell side analysts had mostly caught up with what was going on. But the valuations, dividends and share buybacks were still attractive so I held on.
I also sensed a rerate stage was possible as the earnings became more consistent and predictable. I’ve made this mistake before where I think the juice in a theme is over, but actually as the prediction becomes reality, valuations expand further than you think. And so I decided to not make that mistake again.
But what might work in 2026?
Unicredit and Barclays still look good. Andrea Orcel at Unicredit is the Jamie Dimon of Europe. He’s so ahead of the curve. I love how he thinks and want to keep backing him.
Jackson Financial looks insane and I should add more. I don’t totally understand how all the accounting works, with life insurers you never do, but they are smashing the ball out of the park with these RILA products (index funds with hedges and caps, like structured products). Between dividends and share buybacks Jackson is returning over $1bn/year (13% of market cap).
Below is my back of the envelope for Glencore’s EPS at the current copper price using the spot free cash flow slide from the December 3rd Capital Markets Day, which is worth flicking through. They are making a move to be the bigger copper producer in the world.
What you see is that Glencore is pricing in the move in copper so far. But who says Copper doesn’t move more, or that Coking Coal doesn’t rise too, which it kind of is.
BP and Total.. I’m a broken record, but I still think Energy will do well.($200 Oil Pops the Bubble) In the meantime you get nice dividends…. which you can use to buy more Korea.
SK Hynix… I just added again to the GDR even though it’s moved a lot. Earnings in 2026 and 2027 are going to be insane. You have the HBM4 sales starting mid 2026 and supposedly SK Hynix raised the price +50% in the Nvidia negotiations because they are the only game in town.
Industry sources suggest SK hynix faced tough competition during the negotiation process. However, with Micron’s HBM4 reportedly failing to meet NVIDIA’s performance and power standards—potentially delaying its production by up to nine months—and Samsung still working to improve HBM4 yield rates, SK hynix has emerged as the only supplier currently capable of meeting NVIDIA’s specifications. Source: SYMG Limited
Then you have DRAM prices going through the roof because SK, Micron and Samsung are all moving clean room capacity to HBM chips. Yes, it’s a cycle and one day it will end, but right now we are in the heat of it and there is probably another 12-18 months of good times to enjoy. And maybe it goes on longer. We will see when we get there.
Plus, there is the rumour SK Hynix is trying to create a US ADR, which would be pure cocaine for the US retail army. In the meantime SK Hynix seems like it can trade at KRW 100,000 (10x 2027 earnings).
Then Samsung earnings are also going to be insane. The whole Korea ETF should do well again in 2026.
We’ve been trying to pivot Dirty Dividends more towards Asia (the Asia Pivot), but it’s not going well. The move in the European Banks overwhelmed our allocation of dividends and new money buys to Asia. Oh well. It is what it is. We will continue with the Asia Pivot in 2026.
The Cash Dragons
This portfolio sprang from the idea in 2024 to buy another Untouchable investment, China. 2024 was a bit slow, but 2025 worked well. I also like that we smashed all the ETF’s and Indices.
I’m hopeful 2026 will be another big year for China (China Trip Highlights, Why it’s still a bull market in China with Louis Gave), but I have to flag something concerning.
The charts for BIDU and BABA look good, but earnings for their traditional businesses (paid search, online retail) have been terrible. The earnings cuts mean these stocks are no longer ‘cheap’. The overall Cash Dragon portfolio metrics look terrible.
I’m going to stick with Alibaba and Baidu though, even though the ‘fundamental analyst’ is concerned. The bull case framing would be that the market knows Chinese paid search and online retail are crappy businesses. Instead, investors are more focused on the positive momentum in each company’s new AI businesses (datacenters, AI chips, autonomous driving) and are willing to work through this transition period. For example, Uber and Lyft will use Baidu’s Apollo Go software to roll out autonomous driving in London in 2026 which is kind of exciting. Then the news today Baidu will list their AI chip business, Kunlunxin.
And we don’t talk about it much, but Ping An (PNGAY) has perked up. Q3 results were good and in the global factor model the whole Chinese insurance sector is showing strong earnings revision momentum. And the valuation is still attractive (+100% upside in Ping An)
The plan is to capture this multi-year trend in increased Asia allocations with HKEX and SGX.
Putting it all together
The whole mishmash of everything was +48% in 2025. The AI allocation is Nvidia, Amazon and Meta. I bought these in June. After watching Jensen’s Computex presentation in Taiwan I had to own it. The guy is insane. I want to be onboard.
So looking ahead..
I’m still bullish on gold.
Still bullish on the S&P and NASDAQ (S&P $10,000).
Still bullish energy.
I guess I’m bullish on everything.
Except maybe crypto.
I’m undecided about when to get back into that.
I keep doing work on the fundamentals and have my eye on Coinbase.
In the meantime, if we keep up the consistent good work, and remain respectful of the market gods, the set up is good for us to do well again in 2026.
Erik