It’s been an underwhelming year on the ASX. Will 2026 be any better?
While gold glittered, the local sharemarket underperformed its global peers. But fund managers and analysts see some promising opportunities for the year ahead.
Australian investors pulled back from tech companies in the latter half of 2025, but fund managers and analysts say AI will continue to create waves for sharemarkets in the year ahead after a volatile 12 months that has left the local bourse lagging its global peers.
In New Year’s Eve’s trading session, the ASX200 was on track to deliver a 6.3 per cent return for the year, trailing Wall Street’s S&P500, which gained about 17 per cent, as well as similar indexes in the UK, Germany, Japan, Canada and Hong Kong which climbed more than 20 per cent.
Investors say the Australians sharemarket’s performance in 2025 was underwhelming.Credit: Louie Douvis
As geopolitical conflicts intensified and US President Donald Trump spooked the world with widespread tariffs in 2025, investors pulled out of traditional growth sectors such as health and technology, flocking instead to safety in commodities such as gold.
Since the beginning of the year, the healthcare sector has shed about 25 per cent of its value and information technology companies have lost 22 per cent, while gold prices shot up more than 60 per cent for the year with Northern Star, the country’s biggest gold miner, soaring 72 per cent.
Ten Cap founder and fund manager Jun Bei Liu says while it is difficult to see gold prices continuing to grow at breakneck pace, resources companies should keep performing reasonably well.
‘It’s not a shockingly bad outcome.’
Gemma Dale, NAB director for investor behaviour
“This will be underpinned by commodities such as copper and aluminium because of the requirements from the energy transition, and even iron ore with China steadily coming back,” she says.
Meanwhile, she says it has been a more difficult year for technology and healthcare companies.
“In November, we saw significant amounts of selling across technology companies, even when they delivered great results,” she said, citing software company Technology One. “There were also a couple of large companies such as healthcare giant CSL, which downgraded its earnings and really disappointed investors.”
Liu says this partly reflects the failure of these companies to manage expectations, but also investors being more impatient than they have been in the past when it comes to companies that fall short of expectations.
