Hi, I’m Mike Walther with the Oak Wealth Advisors 2025 second quarter market update.

For 2025, the investment markets have actually performed quite a bit better than most people’s expectations. In fact, if your focus has been on headlines and all the negativity and volatility going on both domestically and around the world, you’d probably be surprised to see just how well your investments have been performing.
If we look at the one-year numbers—which is the middle column of data—for both the U.S. stock market (the first two rows) and the international markets (the third and fourth rows), we’ll see double-digit returns for most markets. Only the U.S. small cap market performed just below that level.

Looking at the three- and five-year data, almost all of the global investment markets—at least on the stock market side—have delivered double-digit returns on an average annualized basis. This has really rewarded investors for sticking with their investments and not jumping into cash when things looked worrisome. That’s a great lesson to take forward: we’re not going to overreact to news stories. Investment markets are resilient, and staying invested over the long term generates the kinds of returns you want from your portfolio.

The only area of recent underperformance has been the fixed income markets. Both the U.S. taxable bond market and the U.S. municipal bond market have underperformed their long-term averages. This is due in large part to relatively high interest rates and the fact that those rates have not declined during this period. We’ve had rising rates followed by more stable, elevated rates more recently.
That said, the U.S. taxable markets have still delivered a 6.1% one-year return, thanks to those higher rates holding steady and continuing to generate income. In the overall summary, we see that the S&P 500 reached a new high at the end of the second quarter. So, we’re really at a peak right now for the S&P 500 index. While it could go either direction from here, we don’t see a huge reason for concern going forward.

We’ve also seen large companies outperform small companies. Historically, we’d expect small companies to outperform in the long run, but they haven’t recently. That may represent an area of opportunity for small-cap investments in the coming years.

With respect to the international markets, as we just noted, international stocks outperformed U.S. stocks for the first time in many years. Clients who stayed consistent with their investment allocation and left a portion of their portfolio in international stocks were rewarded. Those who bailed out and only owned U.S. stocks missed out on the best-performing part of the market in 2025.

All of this has taken place against a backdrop of numerous tariffs being implemented, withdrawn, and changed, along with executive orders coming at rapid speed and a large new tax bill—all of which generated uncertainty. Despite that, corporate America and global companies have managed to perform very well.
We’ve also noticed that the Federal Reserve, despite pressure from the president, has not lowered interest rates. They’re seeing inflation and unemployment levels that suggest lowering rates could heat up inflation and cause more harm than good. However, we do expect that if and when rates come down—likely sometime later this year or next year—we should see improved performance in the stock market, bond market, and real estate market. That’s something for all of us to look forward to.

As a reminder for all our clients, you can log into your portal to view all of your performance data going back to inception. You can see your cash flows, performance relative to invested dollars, how your allocation compares to your target allocation, and the balance of each of your individual accounts. We encourage all of you to review your portfolios and assess how you’re doing relative to your goals.

And again, if you have any questions, reach out to your advisor. Oak Wealth Advisors would be happy to help. Have a great second half of 2025.