Introduction: What 2025 Might Look Like for the Markets
Andrea Unger
Hi, guys, and welcome as usual from Andrea Unger and Francesco Placci, Franz.
Francesco Placci
Hi, guys.
Andrea Unger
So, we are here, as we have been doing for different years now, and we are going to talk about our trading performance during the year that’s just finished, 2025.
So, what about that year? It was a strange year because at the beginning, it had some roller coasters. You might remember the D-day with Donald Trump, with his commercial decisions, which made the markets really become like roller coasters.
Andrea Unger’s Year in Review
And this is my personal account. I’m not really satisfied with the result, not even 10%. By the way, 10% is great. Generally, I would subscribe to any document stating that I make 10% a year for the rest of my life.
But this particular environment, considering this is a trading account with just a portion of my total capital, I really aimed for something more, at least a double-digit performance, which is close to this, but not what I hoped.
How Trump’s Tariffs Affected Andrea’s Trading
The reason why this happened is partially because of Mr. Trump’s decision in early April, you remember the turbulence that they caused. And this hit my strategies really heavily. You can see the drawdown of 14.16% all of a sudden. It was really fast and bad.
That made me worry a little bit about the whole portfolio because normally my portfolio has a good resistance to this kind of event, and it didn’t happen on that occasion, especially Mini S&P 500 was suffering during those days.
So, what did I do? I wisely reduced risk exposure from that moment on. I did recover, but I didn’t recover in the, let’s say, size I could have recovered if I had kept the same risk as at the beginning of the year. But okay, never mind. This is fine.
The Best and Worst Markets for Andrea
I had good months, as you can see. Good months but for December. In December, you can see a drawdown which is mainly linked to the change of performance in my Gold strategies. My trading systems on Gold really performed well, really well during the year but for December.
In December, you can see the charts, Gold started playing around some levels. It didn’t really take on a real trend anymore. This hit the strategies that were in place, causing many stop losses and so on.
And this is reflected in the poor performance of December, which decreased the revenue of the year.
Generally speaking, Gold, as I said, was one of the top performers of the year, but also DAX Future had a very good behavior with my systems.
I saw personally on my systems a good recovery of Nasdaq future performances, but this is not widespread. Some of my colleagues still suffered losses on Nasdaq, so they were not happy about it.
My strategies did well, so I might have foreseen a recovery of Nasdaq, but not completely yet. Because many other systems are still puzzling around with its moves.
While mini S&P 500, as I said, had a lower year. Normally, mini S&P is a locomotive pulling all the profits. This year, it wasn’t like that. And especially in April, it suffered heavy losses.
But I cannot say that I’m satisfied with the performance of my mini S&P 500 systems. But it’s fine. You can see, in the top performers here, many options.
I mean, don’t look at the top or bottom because these are single options while I’m also trading options strategies, the ones which are presented in in our books.
Obviously, they work as a structure, but Interactive Brokers shows the single options. You see crazy numbers here because it’s just a portion of the whole structure that is put on the market.
In any case, I increasingly use this and I am moving cash, let’s say, margins from futures to options because the behavior of the returns is much smoother, I might say.
It’s a matter of age, of heart and so on. I prefer something which is a bit for elderly people like me.
But it’s not the only one here being becoming elderly because also Franz here, unfortunately, he did this in a much better way. I cannot be satisfied with his performance. You can see it here, Franz, it’s up to you.
Francesco Placci’s Year in Review
Francesco Placci
Yeah, these are my performances for the last year. Obviously, I’m happy with my return, it is a 42%, but I’m not happy with the behavior that I had during the year. I wasn’t disciplined.
Francesco’s Costly Mistake
I wasn’t as disciplined as I could because sometimes it happens to me to fall in the same mistakes.
And this is something that I have to correct, especially it’s easy for me to fall in overconfident emotions.
I leveraged too much in my portfolio, especially in the final stage of the year. This made the drawdown even worse than what I expected.
Andrea Unger
If I remember well, you made the very same mistake back in 2018.
Francesco Placci
Yes, but at least in a smaller size, we can say. Because during 2018, I had a very worse end of the year, one of the worst ends of year that I have experienced in my career as a trader.
Anyway, it was just a 20% drawdown. Nothing so bad. But, you know, it depends on how much capital you trade. It could be difficult to cope with. I learned to partially avoid this kind of situation.
Experiments and Calendar Spreads
I never had a margin call. In 2018, I had a very serious margin call. Now not. But anyway, this behavior caused me to have a much more severe drawdown, also because I experimented, I tried something new, with new option strategies based on different expirations. Usually, they are called Calendar Spreads or calendar strategies, we can say, and they are very difficult to… How to say?
Andrea Unger
To predict.
Francesco Placci
To predict, yes. Because when you have different expirations, there are a lot of variables, much more than a strategy, an option strategy with just an expiration. Sometimes the behavior is difficult to understand.
Andrea Unger
The pay-off curves are a bit not so clear, let’s say.
Options, Volatility and the “Old Man’s” Approach
Francesco Placci
Yeah, because maybe the volatility of the first expiration behaves in a way and the other in an opposite way. There is a lot more unpredictability, with respect to the traditional option strategies built on a single option.
Anyway, this calendar strategy went bad, and also the main strategy that we teach here at the Unger Academy, options strategy. But anyway, I had a bigger drawdown, and this is the reason why I’m not happy with my performances.
Anyway, for the next year, I have to try to be more disciplined as a trader. This is my goal for the next year, for this year, for 2026.
Andrea Unger
We will create an indicator. When Franz increases risk, then it’s time for a drawdown.
Francesco Placci
Anyway, December, in my experience as a trader, has been many times the worst month. Maybe next year, the next year-
Andrea Unger
You had better go on vacation.
Francesco Placci
I can stop trading in December.
Final Thoughts on This Year’s Performance
Andrea Unger
It might be better. In any case, of course, I like what Franz did apart from December, which I like, but not enough because he didn’t…
The truth is he really increased the size because he wanted to completely destroy me in performance, and the result was not what he expected. But apart from this, as usual as every year or nearly every year, Franz is beating me.
And the problem is not only Franz is beating me, but I also see students on the Trader of the Year, they are getting the submissions right now, which did really outstanding performance.
And also, our coaches have had very, very good years, mainly because of a rigid discipline, which I miss as usual, and you missed as well on this occasion.
So, we hope to be here in 12 months from now showing better results, at least better or not. I mean, Franz’s is great, and also my 10% or nearly 10% is obviously good in general terms, but we hope to improve, to increase our performance every year.
We hope to be here, sit here and discuss better years. Better years because of a better behavior of the market and a better behavior of ourselves in managing our systems, strategies, and approaches to the markets.
That’s it. We expect to be here, hopefully, in 12 months. And I wish everybody a nice trading year and a nice year. And see you with this kind of video in, again, 12 months from now. Ciao from Andrea Unger and Franz.
Francesco Placci
Ciao, guys.
