We’re right at the end of the year, and it’s time for a market recap to see who’s winning.

I’ve taken a number of real-life country ETFs to illustrate performance by geography. 

Typically, my preference is to buy good companies and mix up portfolios with very simple strategies.

• Satrix S&P 500 – Top 500 companies in the US
• Satrix ALSI Index Fund – Tracks the South African market
• Sygnia Itrix Euro Stoxx 50 ETF – Composed of 50 stocks from 11 Eurozone countries
• Sygnia Itrix FTSE 100 ETF – Tracks the top 100 companies in the UK
• Satrix MSCI China ETF – Tracks the Chinese market

Let’s see how they have done. All returns are measured in ZAR.

5-Year Performance

The red line is the US market and the green line is the South African market. Impressively, our market has matched the US over the past five years, despite the dominance of the “Magnificent 7” and the AI spending boom. 

Both markets have delivered over 17% per year, which highlights why growth assets remain the engine of long-term portfolios.

China (black line) has been the clear laggard. While often seen as higher risk with higher potential returns, the past five years show that this risk has not been rewarded for investors allocated there, and their returns have been significantly lower. The point is that when you take on more risk, the outcome is far higher OR far lower returns.

3-Year Numbers

The 3-year numbers show improved performance for Europe. However, even the worst performer (China again) still generated over 13% per year for this period.

1-Year Returns

I’m happy to report that the South African stock market was the best performer over the last 12 months with a staggering 32% return. When we factor in the rand’s appreciation against the dollar (about 10%), that’s a 42% gain in USD terms. 

We’re all richer in hard currency terms (I hope you had some exposure here!), so let’s give ourselves a pat on the back.

It has been a great year for growth assets. Returns like this don’t come around every day, and this is why we want to have a meaningful portfolio to capture them when they do.

In my experience, we get these massive return years every five years or so. We really need to sit on our hands when the market is flat. The volatility and waiting is just the price of entry.

‘We bring you the latest Garden Route, Hessequa, Karoo news’