Good-bye 2025...Hello 2026!
Portfolio: Taking stock of last year and setting my approach for the new year
Good god, man!
2025 was an interesting year for investing…to say the least. Twists and turns throughout, mostly predicated on government actions, fiscal policies, and tweets. Meanwhile, the AI boom and crypto enthusiasm took markets higher for most of the year, before kinda whimpering down into the end last week.
In 2025, the Beachman S.W.A.T. portfolio returned +38%.
Over the past six years, Beachman’s investing portfolio has returned an average of +141% per year at a compounded annual growth rate of +43%.
Once again, we trounced all the indexes as they performed as follows:
SP500 +16%
Dow Jones +13%
Nasdaq +20%
The Beachman SWAT portfolio hit a high YTD return of +47% on Oct 8th 2025. However, the market pullbacks in Nov and Dec took a slight toll as we headed to the end of the year.
Alongside, in the Summer, we launched our sister trading portfolio, Beachman’s Salty Trades, where 64% of our trades were profitable. Over the past 7 months, we published on 7 multi-bagger stock picks, two of which were upgraded to our longer term investing portfolio.
Here are some of the key take-aways for the year:
Our Beachman’s scoring algorithm continues to mature in its ability to pick superior opportunities. These quarterly scorecards help me stay invested in stocks that are likely to provide market-leading returns for my portfolio.
In 2025, we further improved our technical analysis on stock charts with the goal to make them more actionable. We introduced cleaner, backtested BUY/SELL signals along with new support and resistance levels. Using these more dependable signals, we were able to buy-the-dip confidently and sell-the-rip almost perfectly in several cases.
Since we started keeping records, we have logged 20 multi-baggers, including 16 stocks and ETFs and 4 cryptos.
Our best new stock pick for the year is our only AI cloud position, which returned +44% since we first bought it earlier this year.
Our two best performing positions, both became multi-baggers in 2025, returning +65% and +61% respectively. One is an AI stock and the other is an alternative ETF.
My worst stock pick in 2025 was TTD which we exited in Nov for a -26% loss. Incidentally, TTD was the worst performer in the SP500.
My biggest 2025 learnings involved the use of options to hedge my portfolio during the summer of 2025.
After the euphoric madness of 2020 and 2021, followed by the punch-down in 2022, we had 3 amazing consecutive years of investing from 2023 through 2025 giving us the annualized return of +141% and a +43% CAGR….nothing to sneeze at. We are proud of our success over these past 6 years.
Now, 2026 is going to be tough for investors. Read our take on the matter 👈🏼 to understand why.
We plan to be very surgical about where and when we deploy our capital or scale it back into cash. There is no reason why we cannot beat the indexes again, with smart, well-planned and proficiently-executed portfolio management.
Here is how we can do it:
We invest in market-leading stocks and ETFs with a proven record…and supported by a strong secular catalyst.
We keep it simple and don’t overthink or over analyze things.
We stick to our process, our fundamental analysis, our tracking of leading macro indicators.
We seek out good sources of information…staying away from pump-and-dump characters who are talking their book.
We remind ourselves that no one can predict what markets will do.
If you hear of a good investing or trade idea, it is probably already too late.
We pay close attention to earnings reports while checking if the investment thesis is still alive and strong.
We monitor stock valuations on the basis of market cap, debt, cash, revenues, margins and forward growth estimates.
We use GAAP numbers, not management defined non-standard, adjusted metrics or rule of 40 or rule of 80 or whatever.
We do not get fooled by rosy free cash flow numbers when SBC and shareholder dilution is rampant behind the curtain.
We use technical signals to find better price points at which to buy, trim or sell.
Successfully managing a portfolio is a lot like growing bonsai. You have to give it the necessary attention - water, air, light, pruning, tweaking, shaping, support. We have used these “bonsai techniques” in the Beachman community for six years running and our results speak for themselves.
I am excited about the coming year. I look forward to seeing what the investing and trading gods have in store for us.
Let’s go conquer 2026!
As a paid subscriber, you receive exclusive access to Beachman’s Sleep-well-and-tight (SWAT) portfolio of stock and ETF picks, detailed stock charts with preferred BUY & TRIM price points, BUY, SELL, OVERBOUGHT & OVERSOLD signals, Beachman’s 3D scores for about 80 stocks on his watchlist, access to a dedicated paid-subscribers-only chat where Beachman provides real-time alerts on all his buys, sells, trims, market signals, context and key takeaways that you need to know as an investor.