By Kevin Wood, CFP™, January 2026

It’s easy to overlook just how much chance shapes the world around us.

Consider something as familiar as a pack of playing cards. Once shuffled, the precise order you’re holding is almost certainly something that has never existed before — and is highly unlikely to ever exist again. The number of possible combinations is so vast that it stretches well beyond everyday comprehension.

Financial markets work in a similar way.

Each year delivers a fresh arrangement of outcomes across asset classes: equities, bonds, property, commodities, cash, and more. The precise pattern of returns we experience in any single year is just one outcome among trillions of possible alternatives. In other words, markets rarely repeat themselves — even when they feel familiar.

A Visual Snapshot of 2025

The image at the top of this blog captures this idea perfectly.

The grid shows the annual performance of a wide range of asset classes, arranged from strongest to weakest. It’s a powerful visual reminder that markets don’t move in straight lines — and that leadership changes regularly.

What stands out about 2025 is its breadth. A wide range of asset classes delivered positive returns, making it one of those years where diversification was clearly rewarded. Rather than one narrow theme dominating, returns were spread across different areas of the market.

The ordering itself broadly reflected risk expectations: higher-risk assets tended to outperform more defensive ones, while lower-risk areas played their familiar stabilising role. While reassuring, this kind of alignment is never guaranteed — and history tells us not to expect it to persist indefinitely.

Strong Returns, Shifting Fortunes

Another lesson from the image is how extreme outcomes can appear over time. Some asset classes delivered standout gains in 2025, earning the top spots in the grid. Yet those same assets have, in other years, sat firmly at the bottom.

This is an important reminder for investors: today’s strongest performer can quickly become tomorrow’s laggard. Chasing recent winners may feel intuitive, but it often leads to disappointment when market leadership inevitably rotates.

What This Means for Investors

If markets reshuffle themselves every year, trying to predict the exact order in advance is an uncertain strategy at best.

A more resilient approach is to acknowledge uncertainty and build portfolios designed to cope with many different outcomes — not just the one we hope for.

Diversification remains one of the most effective ways to manage risk, smooth returns, and avoid over-reliance on any single asset class.

At Oak Four, we focus on constructing portfolios that are prepared for a wide range of market conditions. Rather than betting on a single forecast, we believe in balance, discipline, and long-term thinking.

Because just like that freshly shuffled deck of cards, the year ahead will bring a pattern we’ve never seen before.

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. All investments carry risk, including the potential loss of capital.