My 2025 Investment Journey
2025 slipped away quietly. It’s now only the second day of 2026, and like any reflective investor, I found myself staring at numbers—specifically, the P&L analysis in my Tiger Brokers account. Rows of numbers, green and red, unrealised and realised. I’ve learned that if you stare long enough, numbers stop being numbers and start becoming memories.
I opened my Tiger Brokers account back in 2023. Those early years felt encouraging. Both 2023 and 2024 ended with positive overall P&L, reinforcing a sense that I was doing something right. The market rewarded my decisions, and confidence slowly but surely grew. Then came 2025—a humbling reminder that investing is never a straight line upward.
For the first time since I started, my overall P&L for the year turned negative. Seeing red where I was used to green was uncomfortable, but curiosity quickly replaced disappointment. I dug deeper into the data, breaking down my stock performance for 2025 to understand what really happened.
Interestingly, even in a losing year, there were bright spots. My top five contributors to total P&L—combining unrealised gains, realised gains, and dividends—were TLT, SOXL, PFE, TNA, and TMF. These positions didn’t just soften the blow; they reminded me that good decisions can still exist within a bad year. They were proof that not everything was going wrong at once.
Direxion Daily 20+ Year Treasury Bull 3x Shares (TMF)
Direxion Daily Small Cap Bull 3x Shares (TNA)
Pfizer (PFE)
Direxion Daily Semiconductors Bull 3x Shares (SOXL)
iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT)
On the other side of the ledger were the hard lessons. Ready Capital (RC) emerged as my worst-performing stock, followed by WEN, OXY, SOXS, and Arbor in terms of total P&L. These names became quiet teachers, highlighting the risks of certain strategies, timing issues, and perhaps a bit of overconfidence. Unrealised losses sting, but they also sharpen judgment—if one is willing to learn.
Arbor (ABR)
Direxion Daily Semiconductors Bear 3x Shares (SOXS)
Occidental (OXY)
Wendy's (WEN)
Ready Capital Corp (RC)
What truly kept me going through 2025, though, wasn’t price appreciation. It was dividends. The regular dividend payments from TLT and TLH became small but consistent wins in an otherwise challenging year. Each payout felt like a reminder that investing doesn’t have to rely solely on market moods. Reinvesting those dividends to generate even more dividends became both a strategy and a source of motivation.
As I step into 2026, my focus is clearer than ever. I want to lean more deliberately into dividend investing. There’s something powerful about cash flow that compounds quietly over time, independent of daily price swings. While growth and speculation have their place, dividends feel sustainable, patient, and aligned with the kind of investor I want to become.
My 2025 may have ended in the red, but it didn’t end in defeat. It ended with perspective. And sometimes, that’s the most valuable return of all.
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