Saltydog Investor crunches the performance numbers and finds that only four equity-based sectors rose in both January and February. Here are the early winners so far in 2025.

Last month, most global stock markets that we monitor went down. The most notable exception was the Hong Kong Hang Seng, with a one-month return of 13.4%, although it did fall by -2.3% last week.

_{Data source: Morningstar. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.}

The European indices have also had a pretty good start to the year. After two months, the Paris CAC 40 has risen by 9.9%, while the German DAX has made a gain of 13.3%.

The best-performing index last week was the FTSE 100. It finished the week up 1.7%, and closed the month at an all-time high. It went up by 1.6% in February, adding to the 6.1% it posted in January.

Unfortunately, the US indices, along with the Brazilian Ibovespa and Indian Sensex, struggled. The Japanese Nikkei 225 had a particularly difficult month, losing 6.1%.

Out of the 34 Investment Association (IA) sectors that we track each week, only 12 went up in February. That was an improvement on the eight that went up in December, but a significant drop from the 32 that made gains in January.

As we would have expected, the two Money Market sectors went up last month, as did most of the sectors investing in bonds. However, the sectors investing in equities did not fare as well.

The China/Greater China sector rose by 7.0%, but the UK equity, American, Japanese, and Global sectors all went down.

However, the Europe including UK and Europe excluding UK sectors did post gains in February.

Only four equity-based sectors have risen in both January and February. Across the two months, the Europe Excluding UK sector leads the way, with a 8.6% return. Close behind are the Europe Including UK and China/Greater China sectors, which are both showing two-month gains of 8.3%. Finally, the fourth sector is Infrastructure, up 1.7%. 

Last week we highlighted some of the best-performing funds from the China/Greater China sector.

Here are some of the leading European funds, based on their performance so far this year.

It is interesting to see that at the start of last year there was quite a difference in the performance of these funds. By the beginning of June, the Artemis SmartGARP European Eq I Acc GBP fund had gone up by 19.1%, while the Schroder European Alpha Plus Z Acc fund was showing a loss -of 1.2%. All the funds then trended down over the next six months.

However, they started heading back up just before Christmas, and so far this year have all risen by more than 10%.

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