Year 2025 was dominated by Donald Trump's return to the White House and his reciprocal tariffs which resulted in trade war with China.
Within the year, US Fed cut the interest rate from 4.5% to 3.75%, which is generally good for its stock market.
Precious metals price staged a remarkable rally. Gold price rose more than 60% in 2025 to a record high above USD4,500, while silver & platinum prices appreciated even more with their prices more than doubled.
Brent crude oil price dropped about 25% from USD80 to USD60 per barrel, while palm oil price also weakened 20% from RM5,000 to RM4,000 per tonne.
Bitcoin price broke new high in Sep25 to over USD120k but retreated to end the year at around USD88k, down 10% from around USD98k at the beginning of the year.
Malaysia Ringgit appreciated approximately 10% against the USD, from RM4.50 to RM4.05. At the same time, SGD weakened 5% against MYR from RM3.30 to RM3.15.
The world's stock markets were full of joy with many of them broke record high, driven mainly by the AI theme which started since 2-3 years ago.
South Korea's Kospi index rose an unbelievable 76% in 2025, mainly contributed by the explosive gains of SK Hynix & Samsung Electronics.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng & China's Shanghai Index both gained 28% and 18% respectively while both Japan and Taiwan stock markets advanced 26%.
In South East Asia, Vietnam was the champion with a massive gain of 41%, followed by Singapore 23% and Indonesia 22%.
Malaysia's KLCI rose only 2.3% and significantly underperforming most major stock markets. Our neighbours Thailand and Philippines both suffered loss though.
US S&P 500 gained 16% in 2025 but it was lower than 22% & 33% in 2023 & 2024 respectively. It was beaten by many other major stock markets in the world.
The All World ex-US index registered 32% gain in 2025.
Technology and AI continued to dominate the headlines. Tech companies' earnings picked up, there were major collaboration between them and huge capex and orders were committed.
Warren Buffett officially retired at the age of 95 years old, and made his last investment in Google who unveiled its TPU to challenge NVIDIA's GPU.
Stock markets generally suffered big loss in Apr25 when the US reciprocal tariffs were announced. However, markets recovered nicely and surged up in the third quarter.
Because of the shortage in memory required by the data centers, memory related stocks were big winners in 2025.
Sandisk, Micron, Seagate & Western Digital all gained over 200%, with Sandisk who was still making loss in its latest financial year ended Jun25 rising a whopping 560% in one year.
The share price of all the Magnificent 7 stocks registered gain in 2025. Google (Alphabet) was its best performer with a 65% gain, followed by NVIDIA at 39% gain.
Amazon & Apple were relatively "poorer" with only single digit percentage gain.
Besides the Magnificent 7 stocks, most other well-known tech stocks in the US registered handsome gain in 2025.
Other notable US listed tech stocks such as AMD, ASML, Broadcom, Intel, TSMC all closed the year with between 50-100% gain.
Meanwhile in Malaysia, it was a disaster for technology and tech related stocks in 2025.
Uncertainties from the US tariffs, strengthening of MYR, disappointing financial results and massive outflow of foreign funds resulted in the disastrous performance of tech stocks.
Foreign investors pulled out RM22.3bil from local stock market in 2025, compared to net selling of RM4.2bil in 2024.
The table below shows the share price performance of tech and tech-related stocks in Malaysia stock market in 2025. This is not a comprehensive list, and the EMS, precision & CNC machining stocks (industrial products) are included here as tech-related stocks.
Out of the 60 tech-related stocks in this list, only 10 (17%) manage to end 2025 with an annual gain.
The best performer was THMY with a 190% gain, but it was an IPO just listed in Oct25.
Excluding the IPO, the best performer was KGB with a 46% gain, followed by EDELTEQ (38%), UWC (30%), MI (27%) and MPI (24%).
Besides MPI, other OSAT stock UNISEM was up by 2% but INARI suffered a sizable 45% drop.
GTRONIC is no more an OSAT stock to me but a clown who burnt its cash by "investing" in MMAG at 60sen which is now traded at 6.5sen. There is no surprise that its share price fell 54%.
UWC & MI are ATE stocks which recently delivered superb quarter results which helped to push up their share price.
Other larger ATE stocks VITROX & PENTA suffered only mild single digit loss in percentage but GREATEC was unfortunate to lose 32%.
Smaller ATE stock TTVHB was one of the worst casualty which plunged by 74%, while VIS (-38%), QES (-35%) & MMSV (.12%) also couldn't escape from loss.
The worst performing tech-related stocks in 2025 were GENETEC & SFPTECH, with both having 80% of their market cap wiped out in 2025.
GENETEC was once a rocket stock which shot up from RM1.50 to RM50 within one year.
Other than SFPTECH, most other EMS stocks suffered badly in 2025, including NATGATE (-65%), NOTION (-62%), FPI (-59%), VS (-57%), PIE (-56%), SKPRES (-53%), WAVEFRNT (-38%), ATECH (-29%), CEB (-28%) & EG (-11%).
FPI distributed a fat dividend of 80sen in Dec25 though. Including the dividend, the actual loss of FPI was 30%.
GESHEN defied the trend by rising 23% in 2025. This was due to its decent financial results after the acquisition of Local Assembly.
While the share price of Seagate and Western Digital were flying to the sky, HDD/SSD related stocks in Malaysia struggled.
NOTION dropped 62%, JCY dropped 42% and DUFU slipped 16%.
The net profit of memory stocks in the US are expected to increase tremendously due to severe memory shortage, a bit like how the gloves stocks profited from the Covid-19 pandemic by increasing the selling price.
HDD related stocks in Malaysia might see gradual increase in orders but there might be no explosive effect.
Why did those 10 tech stocks achieve gain in 2025? The general rule of the stock market still applies, they made more money in the year or their recent financial results were superb.
Those stocks who lost the most saw their revenue and profit dropped drastically.
Even though 2025 was a bad year for tech stocks, it does not mean that investors can't make money from them.
If you buy in April when stock market was full of fear, you will definitely make superb profit.
While PENTA lost 7% in the year, if you buy its shares in Apr25 at RM1.90, you will gain 104% at the end of the year.
If you buy MI in Apr25 at RM1.40, your gain will be 105%, not 27%.
If you buy UWC in Apr25 at RM1.50, your gain will be 175%, not 30%.
INARI lost as much as 45% in 2025 but if you buy in Apr25 at RM1.45, you will still gain 23% in the year.
There is no surprise that some investors can still make money from tech stocks in 2025. It's about the timing, guts and sometimes luck.
Actually there were still some other stocks in Malaysia stock market that performed brilliantly in 2025.
Data centers infrastructure related companies like SCGBHD & MNHLDG advanced 86% & 32% respectively in 2025, while SUNWAY & SUNCON still able to continue their uptrend this year with another 17% & 22% gain respectively.
MITRA, a small construction company rose by 96% in 2025 thanks to the data centers construction contracts.
Big consumer stocks 99SMART appreciated 54% and FFB was up by 53%. SPRITZER registered marvelous gain of 74% while its peer LWSABAH also followed closely by rising 68% in 2025.
If investors bought the shares of KOPI when it opened at 75sen on its IPO debut day in Jan25, they will earn 87% at the end of Dec25.
Plantation is a rare sector that end the year in positive territory, even the giant UTDPLT could deliver a 45% gain in 2025.
Despite falling share price in 2025, most tech and tech-related stocks are still trading at relatively high PE of 20-50x. Can they turn the tide in 2026?
Malaysia plays a critical role in the world semiconductor supply chain and will benefit from the China+1 phenomenon.
If there is no AI bubbles pending to burst, I guess certain fundamentally strong local tech and tech-related companies might excel.
There are signs that business started to pick up in the second half of 2025. Hopefully year 2026 will be a better year for tech stocks in Malaysia.
No comments:
Post a Comment