2025 Wrapped From Sparta Wealth Partners

“I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing, than to have answers which might be wrong.”

– Richard Feynman

When uncertainty rises, investors often default to recent experience or familiar narratives, even when those approaches quietly accumulate risk.

The year 2025 has highlighted how quickly that can happen:

• A sharp, policy-driven sell-off early in the year was followed by a rapid recovery

• Market leadership remained concentrated in a small group of mega-cap and AI-related stocks

• Volatility appeared in short, intense bursts

• Global markets challenged assumptions formed over the prior decade

These were not developments that could be reliably predicted in advance. Attempting to do so would have required constant judgment calls at exactly the wrong moments. This is why at Sparta Wealth Partners, our focus is not on forecasting what comes next, but on maintaining a rules-based investing process that adapts as trends emerge. 

This month’s Note reviews the defining market themes of 2025 and how our portfolios responded as conditions evolved. Think of it as our version of “Spotify Wrapped,” but for the markets.

But first, here’s a summary of the global asset classes utilized in our portfolios and their exposures for January.

Asset-Level Overview

Equities & Real Estate

The S&P 500 Index found a new all-time high in December, yet also experienced a brief decline to the 50-day moving average. Overall, U.S. equity trends are positive, though there was some retracement this month.

Emerging markets experienced a similar retracement to U.S. equities but have not rebounded as strongly yet. That said, uptrends persist.

Foreign developed markets had no such retracement and remained strong throughout December. As expected, trends are positive and the allocation is at its baseline allocation in our portfolios.

Real estate securities drifted lower in December but remain within the same trading range since April. Trends are down across all timeframes we monitor and as a result this allocation is set to its minimum. The vacated exposure continues to be handed off to stronger U.S. equities. We think this continues to be a strong example of the benefits of our risk handoff process.

Fixed Income & Alternatives

U.S. fixed income performance was down in December, but the asset class still clings to uptrends for now. As a result, this segment remains overweight in our portfolios. If U.S. fixed income declines further in January, it could cause a large shift in exposure to ultra-short-term bonds.

For the first time in many months fixed income will not maintain the largest net exposure within the alternatives bucket. In fact, it will drop to third out of the four major asset classes, behind equities (net long) and currencies (net long international and short USD). Moreover, what was a growing net long position to bonds of intermediate duration will now revert to being net short. Commodities continue to be mixed with net long positions in precious metals nearly matching net shorts in the grain complex.

Sourcing for this section: Reuters, “S&P 500, Dow hit all-time closing highs; gold, silver touch records,” 12/24/2025

3 Potential Catalysts for Trend Changes

Weakening Sentiment:

Domestic consumer sentiment declined for a fifth-consecutive month in December, from 92.9 in November to 89.1 from 92.9 now. “Despite an upward revision in November related to the end of the shutdown, consumer confidence fell again in December and remained well below this year’s January peak,” said a spokesperson for research firm The Conference Board. According to the firm’s survey, consumers’ views on current business conditions are negative for the first time since September 2024.

But Still Spending:

Americans continue to spend, even as they have a negative outlook on the economy, are frustrated about high prices, and are experiencing a slowdown in the job market. AI investment and household consumption, especially by higher-income Americans, accounted for about 70% of growth in Q3. Overall, the economy has defied many of the dire predictions from earlier this year. However, the GDP report contains some troubling contradictions, such as Americans’ disposable personal income remaining flat after inflation and the savings rate falling to its lowest level since 2022. 

Controversial Inflation Report: 

In a surprise, data showed inflation eased in November. However, economists warned against reading too much into the report due to gaps in data collection during the government shutdown. The closure meant Labor Department workers could not collect some of the data they normally compile to produce the consumer price index report. Even prior the official data release, some economists were warning that the agency's technical workarounds to address the collection issues may have biased the November figure downward. For example, missing October data may have made November housing-cost increases look milder than they were because the government estimates housing inflation by examining how rents have changed over the previous month, and missing data led the formula to assume that housing prices did not increase at all in October. 

Sourcing for this section: The Wall Street Journal, “Consumer Confidence Falls as Jobs, Economic Worries Persist,” 12/23/2025; The Wall Street Journal, “The U.S. Economy Keeps Powering Ahead, Defying Dire Predictions,” 12/23/2025; and The Wall Street Journal, “Inflation Eased to 2.7% in Report Distorted by Government Shutdown,” 12/18/2025

2025 Recap: How We Responded

“Lack of intentionality leads to repetition of what is easiest.” – Uknown

Transparency is a key tenet of the Sparta Wealth Partners philosophy, and it has been since we published our original investment strategy rules to our website years ago. As a believer in the value of systematic asset management, we recognize one of the first concerns investors have is the risk of a “blackbox” process producing unexpected results. By focusing on extreme transparency, our goal is to:

• Achieve trust

• Cut down on uncertain outcomes

• Create radical certainty — not of investment returns (because no one can), but of portfolio positioning and investing process

As 2025 draws to a close and investors evaluate the year while setting a course for 2026, we thought it would be helpful to review some of the key themes that made the year unique — and how our portfolios responded. 

A Sharp Correction Followed by a Rapid Recovery

Early in 2025, U.S. equity markets experienced a sudden and severe sell-off triggered by unexpected trade and tariff policy announcements. The speed and depth of the decline rivaled some of the largest drawdowns since 2020. By mid-year, major indexes had regained losses and moved to new highs, creating a rare “crash and rebound within the same calendar year” pattern.

Our portfolios responded as designed, briefly decreasing equity exposure to reduce the risk of greater damage in the event of a prolonged decline. With the benefit of hindsight, a sustained fall did not occur of course, but investors were nevertheless protected. Within a short span of time, our portfolios not only adjusted back to “risk on” but were overweight the best performers.

Extreme Concentration in Mega-Cap and AI Stocks

Market leadership in 2025 continued a run of being highly concentrated in a small group of mega-cap technology companies, many tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure and applications. A disproportionate share of index returns came from a handful of firms, echoing dynamics last seen during the late-1990s tech boom. This level of concentration continued to raise concerns about diversification, valuation risk, and index fragility.

Rather than run from this phenomenon, our portfolios have leaned into it, knowing that rules designed to exit assets in downtrends provide a measure of protection from concentration risk. The adage, “the markets can stay irrational longer than investors can stay solvent” applies. The beauty of a systematic investing process is the potential ability to not only sidestep risk, but also participate in positive trends for longer than others may be able to stomach with discretion alone.

Elevated and Episodic Volatility

Volatility in 2025 was higher than long-term averages, driven largely by policy announcements, geopolitical concerns, and shifting expectations for interest rates. Rather than remaining persistently high, volatility appeared in sharp bursts, reinforcing a market environment that was reactive and headline-driven.

In the moments when volatility was at its highest in 2025, our portfolios had either reduced or were reducing exposure to the most volatile assets. We have repeatedly written about the clustering effect of volatility during drawdowns. Having a simple set of rules to sidestep declines is the easiest and most effective way to miss out on volatility, in our opinion.

Unusual Global Performance Dispersion

Despite reaching record highs, U.S. equities underperformed several international markets during parts of 2025. This was notable given the historical dominance of U.S. stocks during the past decade. The dispersion highlighted changing regional dynamics, currency effects, and differences in valuation starting points.

Likely the chief reason why our portfolios failed to outperform passive benchmarks in 2025 was due to this occurrence. Coming into the year, we were overweight U.S. equities and underweight foreign due to entrenched uptrends domestically, as well as their relative strength. As foreign equities performed well early in the year, we brought our exposure up, through our systems increased exposure at a measured speed. Despite this headwind, our portfolios delivered above-average performance and continued to close the gap on passive benchmarks as 2025 neared a close.

Conflicting Economic Signals

The economic backdrop in 2025 was mixed. Strong corporate earnings and resilient consumer spending supported equity prices. However, concerns about inflation persistence, trade policy, and labor market cooling created ongoing uncertainty. This tension between solid fundamentals and elevated risk made investor sentiment unusually fragile.

As always, our portfolios ignored the news. Instead, our investing system focused on the only thing we believe matters: price. If there’s anything we hope investors appreciate, it is this: reacting to what IS, rather than trying to predict what is to come, is the best process for helping investors achieve their goals.

Conclusion

What made 2025 unique was not any single event, but the combination of a sharp policy-driven sell-off, rapid recovery, extreme market concentration, elevated volatility, and shifting global leadership — all occurring within one year. The result was a market environment that challenged traditional diversification assumptions and reinforced the difficulty of short-term market prediction.

The peace of mind we gain from 2025 is that despite its uniqueness, our investing systems reacted the same way they always do and produced a result that we believe can keep most investors on target for reaching their goals. In other words, we had no more foreknowledge than we ever do — or will ever have — and yet produced a positive outcome. Frankly, it’s been that way since our inception, so we are not surprised. Moreover, we believe the investing processes that have served us well in 2025 will continue to do so in the year ahead. 

#MarketCommentary

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Past performance is not indicative of future results. The material above has been provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal, tax, or investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security or strategy or of any particular strategy or investment product. The investment strategy and themes discussed herein may be unsuitable for investors depending on their specific investment objectives and financial situation.

Opinions expressed in this commentary reflect subjective judgments of the author based on conditions at the time of writing and are subject to change without notice. The above commentary is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Not intended as legal or investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security or strategy.

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An index is an unmanaged portfolio of specific securities. The performance of which is often used as a benchmark in judging the relative performance of certain asset classes. It should not be assumed that past performance in any way relates to future results. An investment cannot be made directly in an index. An index does not charge management fees or brokerage expenses, and no such fees or expenses were deducted from the performance shown.

S&P 500 Index: A widely used U.S. equity benchmark. It contains 500 U.S. stocks chosen for market size, liquidity, and industry group representation.