As we publish our last edition of the year, the team at bl.portfolio would like to sincerely thank you —‘The Readers’ — for your support through the year. The great Italian astronomer, physicist and polymath Galileo Galilei once said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” In our profession, our reputation with you and the trust and faith you place upon us is the fulcrum. The lever is the long-entrenched commitment that we have to deliver the very best of completely-unbiased insights and analysis to you, week after week. So, in order to have a meaningful and positive impact in your investment journey, both the fulcrum and the lever must function well. We aim and toil to preserve that every single day.
As we pen this, reflecting on the year gone by, we are specifically reminded of one feedback we received from a former RBI Governor in January, to an article published in bl.portfolio. The feedback to us, in response to the article read: businessline is a very sound and sober voice. We instantly realised It resonated with what we always want to be defined by at bl.portfolio.
When we give you financial insights, analysis and suggestions, we want it to be sound and sober. That is the only way to respect your hard-earned money, which is an outcome of your hard work and sacrifices. So, in giving suggestions and insights on how to deploy it, we need to show utmost diligence and seriousness. Jazzing or hyping it up, getting influenced by crowd behaviour, mixing entertainment and financial advice etc all distract and defeat the core purpose. All-time highs, mega IPOs and fantasy stories of future riches can grab attention, but to us it is just jarring noise, unless we feel you can benefit from it in some way. Due to this, prudence over popularity, rationalism over exuberance has been our guiding philosophy in 2025, just as it has always been.
Deep dives
While high-flying Sensex and Nifty targets were the standard at the start of the year, our outlook on equities has remained cautious right through, in continuation of our stance in the prior year as well. Hence in 2025, we enhanced focus beyond our normal coverage — on other options for investors to park their funds in — be it gold, silver, platinum or debt/hybrid/ multi-asset mutual funds via detailed analysis in our Big Story section. While it has been the norm at bl.portfolio to give actionable insights in every article, this time when it came to few articles — like our deep dive on the IT sector — we stopped short of recommendations. This is because in past years, we had already cautioned investors and recommended them to exit the stocks. While the others were caught up in buybacks and dividends, we were questioning the growth prospects, given the lack of investments by the IT companies and the threat of AI. We felt validated when this line of questioning got subsequently picked by the rest during the course of this year. Post the severe correction in the sector since, they are kind of in no man’s land. Doing nothing is better in such instances. It is key to build deep insights during such times to act effectively at a later date — that was the intent behind some of those articles.
In working on many of the deep dives, we too learnt a lot, and more so from your feedback. For example, the feedback we received to our Big Story articles, on online gaming and recovering your unclaimed money, gave us more perspectives on the severity of the issues. We will continue actively playing our part to bring more such issues to light.
Risk vs reward
With a majority of the listed universe underperforming even fixed income this year, we feel validated; although, in retrospect, we wish we had given more book profit/sell calls. During the year, we published 119 calls across primary and secondary markets. Out of the 70 secondary market calls, only 19 were buys, 28 were accumulate on dips, and 23 were hold or book profit calls. A few weeks ago, we received a query from a reader asking us why we were giving more accumulate-on-dips calls than buy. He wanted to know if investors wouldn’t benefit by buying right away rather than waiting for corrections to accumulate.
Our response to that reader and to others with similar doubts is that when valuations are expensive and there are global macro-economic issues, the investing approach has to be cautious. During such times, the risk is not in missing opportunities, but in making wrong investments. Entering a stock is easy, exiting is not, as your mind gets hacked with anchoring bias — anchored by the price at which you entered, and the circumstance and assumptions upon which you entered.
The year 2025 (and probably 2026 too) was no 2020, 2021 or 2023, where anyone with a demat account had the Midas touch! In such times, it’s better to slow down, and gradually add to positions with a long-term horizon that will extend into the next market cycle.
When it comes to IPOs, out of the 49 that we covered, based on our analysis we suggested that investors avoid 32 of them and subscribe to only 17. Our recent Big Story, covering IPOs of the last five years, also indicated that in many IPOs, you get a chance to buy at a price lower than the issue price at some time in the future.
New steps
When it comes to mutual funds, we took a step further to suggest poor performing funds that you can clean out of your cupboard. Traditionally, we had been focused on recommending good funds based on our analysis and leaving it to readers to make their own exit call based on their financial goals and circumstances. This step was taken as given market valuations and other risks, we felt some guidance to investors was required on this aspect as well.
Except in rare instances via SIPs, we remain cautious on small-cap funds. Hence, you would not have seen much suggestions from us on this front over the last one year.
This year, following reader requests, we added weekly outlook on the US markets in our Technical Analysis section. Our weekly video series by our in-house technical analyst BL Guru is nearing its 200th episode. We are grateful to the ardent followers, who call us if uploading of the video is delayed even by a few hours due to unavoidable circumstances! Because of this, rain or shine, Guru never gets an off on a Saturday!
Investing approach
As we conclude this note, we would like to leave you with this story that we heard from legendary investor of Big Short fame – Steve Eisman, in one of his podcasts. To a question on why he invests only in US stocks and not in international markets including in countries like India, he shared his experience as a fund manager when he was investing in markets globally. He narrated how whenever he had a nocturnal awakening, he would be tempted to check the performance of his investments in a country where markets were open at that time. Once he checked, whether the book was at a loss or a profit that day, and he could never get back to sleep again! His message from his experience: Investing can be a passion and an occupation, but if it becomes a pre-occupation its time to tweak your style. There is no need to be a hero.
So, if your investments are not allowing you to sleep well (whether you have made or lost money in 2025), take a pledge to tweak your style to a level that will allow you a peaceful and sound sleep in 2026.
Wishing you a very happy and prosperous 2026!
Published on December 28, 2025
