The stocks to watch in 2025 – and what the best performers this year all had in common

Investors who invested their savings in technology stocks will more than quadruple their money by 2024.

ZipCo was the best performer in Australia this year, with its share price rising 364 percent from 64 cents to $2.97.

That means someone who invested $10,000 in this stock would have turned it into $46,400.

Are The Australian stock market’s top performer status is a marked change from 2022, when it fell from $4.33 to just 51 cents after rival Afterpay soared.

Online trading platform Moomoo’s Chief Commercial Officer Michael McCarthy said investors now view Zipco as a known quantity in the buy now/pay later market.

“Zip is now seen as the cleanest player,” he told Daily Mail Australia.

“It attracts money; I also think it lagged behind the others for quite some time.

“In fact, it performed poorly, while others did well.”

Technology and healthcare stocks made up the top five this year, with Life360, Sigma Healthcare, Pro Medicus and Telix Pharma dominating the honors list.

“Healthcare has long been a favored industry – it’s all about demographics,” McCarthy said.

‘The idea that an aging population will continue to drive growth in the supply of medical services has been around for a long time.’

Mr McCarthy said investors would especially embrace tech stocks if they were using the product themselves with Life360, a family safety and location sharing app, which rose 201 per cent from $7.56 to $22.77.

“I suspect a large portion of Life360’s shareholders are app users themselves and they like the service they get – that’s a really big theme in the market at the moment,” he said.

Pharmacy chain Sigma Healthcare, which owns Amcal and is merging with Chemist Warehouse, was the third best performer with its share price rising 163 percent from $1 to $2.63.

“It is believed that they can potentially benefit from the collaboration between the two major players in the market,” McCarthy said.

“Sigma is seen as a potential beneficiary of that major merger.”

Pro Medicus, Australia’s top performer during the 2023-2024 financial year when it doubled in value, did even better in 2024.

The medical imaging company’s stock price rose 166 percent this year, from $95.83 to $254.66.

Telix Pharmaceuticals rounded out the top five and also more than doubled as its share price rose 146 percent from $10.08 to $24.83.

Australia’s best-performing shares comfortably outperformed the broader stock market, with the benchmark S&P/ASX200 rising 7.6 percent over the past year to 8,215 points.

The Australian Securities Exchange hit a record high in early December, with Commonwealth Bank and Westpac rising by a third in 2024 as investors forgot about the banking royal commission.

“That heavy weight on the banks and their very strong performance this year was one of the biggest contributors to the overall market high,” he said.

But the market has since retreated 3.3 percent after losing $50 billion in one day as investors worried the U.S. Federal Reserve would not cut rates as deeply as previously thought.

“It’s no surprise that as the world seems to change, and countries start to go their own way, it’s going to have a big impact on stock markets,” McCarthy said.

But McCarthy said investors were already excited about US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20, despite his threat to impose 60 percent tariffs on China, because they saw him as a pro-business leader.

“Certainly there are tax cuts on the table, proposed during the campaign — that’s one of the driving forces,” he said.

“A corporate tax cut would obviously be positive for business and stimulate the U.S. economy.

“I hate to vilify you guys all the time, but I think the main vibe is that they’ve elected a pro-business government and whatever happens, there will be an overall positive impact on the American economy.”

As for 2025, Mr McCarthy said embattled mining stocks such as BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue could have a good year if the Treasury is proven wrong and the price of iron ore, the raw material used to make steel, does not fall back to $60. per tonne, down from levels above US$100 per tonne, due to the collapse of Chinese properties.

“The track record for forecasting iron ore prices is poor, including Treasury estimates,” he said.

Mr McCarthy expects the Australian stock market to reach new highs in 2025, but with a bumpy ride.

“After a year in which we have had repeated highs and there is very clear momentum, on balance it seems very likely that we will see new record highs at some point, possibly even in the first quarter of next year,” he said.