As we step into 2025, I’d like to wish you and your loved ones a very Happy New Year. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season filled with joy and relaxation. I personally enjoyed a restful week in Phuket with my family – the perfect way to recharge and reflect on the successes of the past year. Thank you for trusting us with your investments, and we look forward to another successful year together.

2024 was an exceptional year for Syfe’s Core Portfolios, with every portfolio delivering returns that outpaced their respective benchmarks. Earlier in the year, we introduced several enhancements to the portfolios, and we’re thrilled to see these changes already making a positive impact for our clients.

The Core Equity100 portfolio delivered a remarkable 21.74% return in SGD for 2024, outperforming the benchmark MSCI All Country World Index. It also outpaced our peers by 2–4% during the year.

Additionally, the multi-asset portfolios – Core Growth, Core Balanced, and Core Defensive – generated strong returns of 17.49%, 13.44%, and 10.34%, respectively, all exceeding their benchmarks.

Key Drivers of Performance

The portfolios benefitted from the global market rally in 2024, with strong contributions from US equities. Meanwhile, a stellar year for gold added further gains to the multi-asset portfolios.

The October 2024 portfolio rebalancing also played a significant role in driving outperformance. Here’s how:

• Equity portfolios: The factor-based enhancements (size, value, and quality tilts) contributed an additional +0.7% performance in Q4 alone. These strategic tilts, grounded in academic research, have historically driven long-term returns and complement the globally diversified structure of our portfolios.
  
• Multi-asset portfolios: The upgrades to fixed income, including UCITS ETFs for improved tax efficiency, shortened duration and the addition of investment-grade and high-yield corporate bond overlays, enhanced stability and income potential. The gold allocation, reduced as part of our asset class risk budgeting framework, also delivered strong performance as the commodity continued to rally in Q4.

Looking Ahead

2024 rewarded investors who stayed invested and maintained well-diversified portfolios. The year’s performance underscored the effectiveness of our enhanced, factor-driven strategy – with tilts towards value, quality, size, and growth – alongside fixed-income adjustments to bolster stability and income potential.

We remain committed to this approach in 2025, striving to deliver resilient, returns-focused portfolios – if you’d like to revisit the strategy behind our portfolios, click here or for a refresher on what we mean by factors you can check out the video below. 

If you have any questions, feedback or there are other topics you would like to hear more on then please don’t hesitate to reach out at [email protected].