This is not financial advice. However, there is some valuable insight to be gained in this exercise. Markets when read carefully, offer something arguably more valuable than advice: a diagnostic.
Scientists say that you can tell the entire life and history of an animal from looking at its cellular makeup; what it consumed, the terrain it traversed, even the stresses it endured.
Similarly, you can tell a great deal about an economy not from policy speeches or GDP headlines, but from which companies capital rewarded most aggressively and why. This is not to suggest that stock-market performance is an objective measure of corporate strength. Far from it. Often it is quite the opposite.
Equity prices frequently represent a vote of belief in future earnings that do not yet exist. For example, in 2025, Tesla’s valuation exceeded its earnings by a ratio of over 300 to 1—an expression of expectation rather than present profitability.
In this sense, we can get a forecast of where the ‘investor capital and sentiment’ winds are blowing. Seen through this lens, the year’s biggest stock-market winners are less a scoreboard and more a weather vane—signalling where investor capital expects opportunity, regulation, and demand to concentrate next.
The United States stock market
A popular saying goes, ‘When America sneezes, the world catches a cold’.
In 2025, the United States caught a major financial ‘bug’. In 2025, the United States, the world’s largest capital market did more than sneeze. It reignited a full-scale trade confrontation with China, sending shockwaves through currencies, commodities, and global supply chains and the global stock markets.
The positioning of the United States in respect to the tariffs led to the US Stock Market response directed towards companies of the future such as AI companies and safe havens such as gold.
Gold
Gold futures and ETFs recorded a historic year in 2025, with spot gold rising 64 percent—the strongest performance since 1979.
This surge reflected institutional behaviour stemming from the China- USA trade war and the uncertainty it brought, central banks diversified away from US dollar dependence amid the geopolitical risk, tariff escalation, and inflationary pressure.
Gold-exporting countries such as Ghana and South Africa benefited materially, with export revenues cushioning post-COVID fiscal stress.
What lies ahead – Experts expect the soaring flight of the precious metal to come down to earth, settling between US$4,000 and 5,000 this year. The Supreme Court of the United States is looking likely to declare President Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional.
These are the cases of Trump v. V.O.S. Selections and Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Consolidated), where the central dispute revolves around Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the sole power of taxation. The State’s contention is that the tariffs do not constitute a tax but instead fall under the President’s emergency powers.
In the event that the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the administration, Trump’s jockeying for the removal of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, in favour of a more conciliatory replacement, might signal a more inflationary monetary policy.
This might keep the trend of diversification away from the US dollar afloat, meaning gold’s time in the sun might not be up just yet. There was another, more massive gold rush in 2025, ironically over a much more common element: silicon.
AI and tech stocks
The rise of AI, especially in the form of LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Meta-AI has supercharged a mad scramble for the hardware that runs these AI models; silicon semiconductor chips.
Companies like AI chip supplier Nvidia and AMD rose by 39 percent and 84 percent respectively. Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) posted a 35 percent profit in their fourth-quarter earnings report in January 2026, with their stock rising nearly 60 percent in 2025.
But the biggest winner in the ‘Chatbot Wars’ was Google (listed as Alphabet). The stock rose 55 to 60 percent, encroaching on OpenAI’s (ChatGPT) market share, while avoiding bleeding cash like its competitor, because Google has an array of other products to offset the losses from its AI buildout. OpenAI unfortunately does not have that cushion.
Look out for Google’s Gemini chatbot seizing more market share in 2026. Increased training and commercial use of LLMs produce a lot of data. Vast data demands equally vast amounts of storage space. It is no surprise that the overall biggest winners in tech for 2025 were memory-chip manufacturers.
The company SanDisk was the single best performer in the S&P this year, up 594percent, followed closely by Western Digital at 300percent, Micron at 233percent, and Seagate. These were the four best-performing stocks in the S&P, and all of them deal with computer memory.
In other words. the AI industry as a whole essentially walked up to the memory industry with a giant blank cheque and said, “We want to buy everything you make.” Because the memory manufacturers were in a supply-constrained period with many factories having been shut down, prices went through the roof.
Consumer memory has been priced out for regular consumers as almost all of it goes to the AI industry, making all four companies’ massive winners. The last highlight for American stocks in 2025 is an unlikely candidate: online retail investing
Retail stock trading
The fifth best-performing stock of the year was Robinhood, an app which allows the public to trade stocks right on their handheld devices. This performance signals the growing trend in ‘passive wealth creation’ sources being sought out by mostly millennials and Gen Z.
In 2026, expect the growth of other such passive income investment companies like those of online gambling/prediction market apps such as DraftKings, Kalshi and PolyMarket.
The Ghanaian stock market
Mobile/e-payment processors – Africa processed 65percent of global mobile money transaction value in 2024, or US$1.1 trillion. The continent also led in trade volume, accounting for nearly 82 billion of the 108 billion global transactions. For sub-Saharan Africa alone, that added US$190 billion to GDP through mobile money use.
Consequently, the biggest winner on the Ghanaian Stock Exchange was Clydestone; provider of mobile and e-payment settlement, payment switching and digital finance system integration services. The stock rose by a whopping 1,433 percent.
This was partly driven by moves the Bank of Ghana and financial institutions have made towards an increasingly digitalised economy, and the implementation of cross-border payment systems under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The writing is on the wall for consumer preference of mobile finance, and investors bet heavily on Clydestone’s potential to capture transaction volumes in this new ecosystem. The trend towards digital commerce also saw the rise of MTN Ghana’s stock by nearly 80 percent, and it shows no signs of slowdown in 2026.
Banking and insurance stocks – In second place was SIC Insurance Company Limited with a 344 percent increase. The company achieved its strongest financial results in more than ten years, with profit after tax surging 316.9 percent.
Key contributor was the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which brought transparency to SIC’s books, revealing profitability that was previously obscured by conservative provisioning under previous standards.
2025 was a big year for banking. In third, fourth and fifth place were Ecobank Ghana PLC (+ 285percent), GCB Bank PLC (+ 216percent) and Access Bank PLC (+211percent) respectively. Others like Republic Bank and Societe Generale Ghana Ltd also ranked among the top fifteen best performing stocks.
There’s a significant reason for this incredible rally. Following the IMF Extended Credit Facility (ECF), Ghana’s inflation profile improved dramatically throughout 2025, falling to its lowest levels since the COVID-19 pandemic.
This justified the easing of interest rates. Where there are lower interest rates, the cost of borrowing for businesses decreases.
This creates massive opportunity for banks. Also, the risk premium offered by equities became increasingly attractive. Fund managers became more likely to rotate capital from low-yield treasuries into more high-dividend-yielding banking and oil marketing stocks.
What lies ahead – On December 30, 2025, the President signed into law the Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) Act 2025 (Act 1154), for the regulation of digital assets, namely cryptocurrencies.
The promises of crypto from five years ago of a libertarian medium of exchange free from the grip of central banks have not panned out, to put it lightly. The reality, especially in the West, has been a flurry of high-risk, speculative tokens that reward early-adopters and inside traders.
The ‘pump-and-dump’ scheme as it is often called, where the value of tokens sharply drop to zero after the insiders sell high and pull the rug from under amateur investors.
It is welcome relief that this legislation will mitigate many of the pitfalls of the virtual currency market, but the volatile swings we saw from mainstream cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin last year may be signalling a strong lack of enthusiasm from the market, and it does not look like negative sentiment will change anytime soon.
Nonetheless, high-yield, speculative investments tend to attract more investors in a low-yield treasuries marketplace, such the one Ghana finds itself in now. There is huge opportunity for virtual asset providers who establish credibility, to win big with Ghanaian investors with a large risk-appetite, who are seeking out high-yield securities.
ENERGY – TotalEnergies Ghana increased 207 percent for 2025. Crude oil prices generally declined in 2025 with supplies in the global crude oil market exceeding demand. This remained the case despite events such as Israel’s June 13 strikes on Iran and sustained tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
The year also saw the stabilization of the cedi, which mitigated forex losses for the petroleum product importer. Combined with efficient cost-cutting measures internally, TotalEnergies held a strong sixth position amongst the top ten best performers.
Agriculture – Global palm oil demand in 2025 spiked, driven by factors such as Indonesia’s biodiesel mandate. The move to a B40 (40percent palm oil blend) mandate significantly increased domestic demand by an estimated 2 million metric tons. India and China also increased Imports of the product, and it outcompeted substitutes like soybean for price on the global market.
In July 2025, the Tree Crop Development Authority (TCDA) announced a directive required all importers of palm oil products to register and obtain permits before importing into Ghana. This protects local producers from being undercut by cheaper imports from Southeast Asia. This helped drive companies like Benso Oil Palm Plantation Ltd to a stock value increase of over 120 percent.
What lies ahead – There is no indication that the mobile/e-payment sector will slow down, despite any unforeseen shocks in the global market. The Bank of Ghana introduced Directives for Digital Credit Service Providers in September of 2025, which includes provisions like mandating that such institutions have a physical office within the jurisdiction and daily submission of their credit data.
This will mitigate unscrupulous actors and overleveraged lenders, which displays a strong posture of stability to potential investors the mobile/e-finance space in 2026. Lower interest rates typically mean more available capital for businesses, which means more knock-on benefits for consumers and the unemployed.
Experts forecast a year of sustained growth, with more humble, down-to-earth margins of return. That notwithstanding, the gains made by the cedi against the dollar, the increased export revenue from gold, and lower oil prices may experience volatility depending on any geopolitical fallout from the United States fiscal policy, hostile relations with China or any other adversaries, or some combination of both. How big the fallout will be, remains to be seen.
In conclusion, the markets in 2025 delivered a consistent message: capital flows toward scarcity, stability, and systems that reduce friction. The big players will sneeze again in 2026. For all our sakes, let us hope the cold we catch is short-lived. Have a profitable 2026.
>>>The writer is a lawyer at Koranteng & Koranteng Legal Advisors. Contact: [email protected]
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