The Slow and Steady passive portfolio update: Q2 2025

by The Accumulator on July 8, 2025

This time three months ago, the Slow & Steady passive portfolio was suffering under the strain of Trump’s one-man assault on the global trade system. But we’ve made up all our losses since then.

Indeed we’re now ahead, albeit by a none-too-convincing 1.6% year-to-date.

Our four equity funds have put on double-digit gains in the space of a quarter. Global property is dragging its heels though – and good old gilts continue to make me rue the day.

Here are the numbers. See the annualised returns column for the all-important long-term gains:

The Slow & Steady is Monevator’s model passive investing portfolio. It was set up at the start of 2011 with £3,000. An extra £1,310 is invested every quarter into a diversified set of index funds, tilted towards equities. You can read the origin story and find all the previous passive portfolio posts in the Monevator vaults. Subtract about 3% from the portfolio’s annualised performance figure to estimate the real return after inflation.

Stick or twist

I’m more convinced than ever that nobody (but nobody) can predict what’s around the corner.

Is the US market being slowly poisoned by political risk? Or is it the last bastion of economic dynamism in the Western world?

Flip a coin? Best of three.

I’m in no hurry to make a call. The political and commercial climate seems so changeable, I’d sooner make a claim for whiplash.

It’s funny how the more febrile the world becomes, the more obvious it should be – but somehow isn’t – that a passive strategy makes sense.

The thing is: we’re primed to look for new answers to new problems. Ideas, strategies, and products that are supposedly tailor-made to meet the moment.

It’s less the triumph of hope over experience than the triumph of marketing over rationality.

Perhaps there’s an analogy to be drawn between attitudes to passive investing and the apparent loss of faith in our democratic institutions?

Both realms offer the same old solutions. Products that can only achieve so much and suffer from a perceived lack of ambition in the age of moonshots. Results that are far from guaranteed and sometimes you must go backwards before you go forwards. Patience required.

The alternative? Roll the dice on a buzzy new venture fronted by a man with a tan promising the Earth.

Because that always works, right?