A single dialogue can explain frustration, hope, excess or discipline better than a year’s worth of market commentary. The year 2025 was one of those years where the market’s story felt oddly familiar—dramatic in parts, confusing in others, but ultimately rooted in human behaviour. From tariff anxieties and AI promises to quiet discipline and surprise comebacks, the year unfolded like a series of scenes rather than one clean narrative. Look closely, and it wasn’t chaos. It was cinema. Here is the year, inspired by the movies.
Tariff pe tariff
Who can forget Sunny Deol pounding the courtroom table in Damini, railing against a justice system trapped in an endless loop of ‘tareekh pe tareekh’. That same frustration—resolution constantly deferred—defined global markets in 2025. Just when investors believed trade tensions had peaked, fresh tariff threats resurfaced, dragging markets back into macro mode. The year became less about company fundamentals and more about policy headlines. Sector leadership flipped rapidly. Pharmaceuticals rallied on protectionist rhetoric for one month, only to give back the gains when negotiations resumed the next. When macro takes the wheel, markets don’t reward precision, but patience.
Saiyaara economics
In this year’s surprise blockbuster Saiyaara, the word itself is explained as something luminous yet distant—a celestial body you can see clearly, feel drawn to, but never quite touch. That idea perfectly captured artificial intelligence in 2025. AI-dominated boardrooms and earnings calls, shaping narratives around margins, capex cycles and future stock leadership. Yet when it came to measurable productivity gains, clarity remained elusive. Costs were visible, benefits deferred, and timelines fuzzy. Interestingly, India emerged as something of an anti-AI trade—driven more by domestic consumption, manufacturing and financialization than by frontier tech narratives. Perhaps 2026 will tell us whether the promise was real or just another version of doglapan, Hindi for double standards.
Apna time, their markets
When Gully Boy gave us apna time aayega, it became an anthem for the overlooked and underestimated. In 2025, that sentiment applied neatly to global markets outside the US. America remains the world’s dominant equity market and the default destination for capital. Investors didn’t abandon it—but they did begin to look beyond it with renewed seriousness. Europe surprised with stability, Korea benefited from favourable tech cycles and valuations, and other ignored markets saw incremental flows. As The Dark Tower reminds us, “There are other worlds than these.” Faced with concentration risk and narrowing return spreads, capital quietly widened its search for opportunity.
The Dhurandhar IPO season
When Akshaye Khanna strolls into Flipperachi in Dhurandhar, there’s no hesitation and no explanation. The room simply adjusts. India’s IPO market in 2025 carried a similar air. Large, new-age companies dominated the listing calendar, many arriving with scale and confidence. Some rewarded investors handsomely; others sparked fierce debates around pricing and sustainability—often both at once. What stood out wasn’t just performance, but posture. These were not tentative listings testing appetite; they were statements about the depth and maturity of Indian capital markets. Whether every valuation will age well is a question only time can answer. Picture abhi baaki hai, dost.
Dheere Dheere, the market changed
Few songs capture gradual transformation as well as dheere dheere se meri zindagi mein aana from Aashiqui. That line neatly describes how domestic institutional investors (DIIs) reshaped markets in 2025. While foreign investors stayed cautious (again!), domestic money quietly became the market’s anchor. Millions of investors setting aside ₹1,000 or ₹2,000 a month may not look dramatic in isolation, but together they built a systematic investment plan (SIP) book of nearly ₹30,000 crore. Volatility was absorbed, corrections softened, and participation broadened. At the same time, speculative excesses cooled. Leveraged trading lost some of its frenzy. As Welcome reminds us—’control, Uday, control’—discipline returned. SIPs didn’t make noise, but they steadily set a base for markets.
The Baazigar metal
Haar ke jeetne wale ko hi baazigar kehte hain. Shah Rukh Khan delivered that line in Baazigar with equal parts menace and confidence, daring the audience to underestimate him again. In 2025, silver seemed to audition for that role. Written off for years, it stepped back into the spotlight as industrial demand linked to the energy transition met renewed interest in its role as a precious metal. The comeback wasn’t polite. An October short squeeze caught positioning off guard and added fuel to the rally. The surge surprised many, but SRK-style second acts usually do. Silver reminded investors that assets dismissed too early often make the most dramatic leading men.
As I see it, 2025 wasn’t a bad year for equities, just an ordinary one, marked by extraordinary rotations and plenty of noise. Markets always feel dramatic when you’re inside them; every year looks like a climax in real time. The real lesson is simple: stay in your seat, let the story play out, and watch the headlines a little less. Most years aren’t finales—they’re mid-acts. The show, as always, goes on.
Happy New Year, and see you in the markets.
Radhika Gupta, is the MD & CEO at Edelweiss Asset Management Ltd (EAML) and the views expressed above are her own.