2025 in review: Replicating directors’ dealings outperforms index performance
January 2, 2026
2025 was an exceptional year at the stock market with highly positive returns across the leading indexes in Germany. It has also been the second year of BOSS STOCKS helping to replicate directors’ dealings for superior investment returns with stocks. Therefore, it is a good time to review again, after 2024, how managers’ transactions held up against the index performance of the German DAX. BOSS STOCKS drew on 209 directors’ dealings (stock acquisitions) in the German DAX which were published across 2025. Many directors of the same company purchased in parallel, generating 116 signals to replicate.
Director’s dealings more than doubles investment returns of the DAX
- In 2025, the German DAX rose by almost 23%. So, investing 1,000 EUR at the beginning of the year would have yielded nearly 230 EUR before taxation at the end of December.
- Investing 1,000 EUR to replicate the 116 signals of managers’ transactions would have yielded more than 560 EUR before taxation. This equals a margin of more than +56% which is nearly 33 percentage points superior to the DAX’s return.
- This does not mean that all signals are positive and without risks. For example, while all replicated dealings for Commerzbank (+55%), DHL Group (+24%) and RWE (+18%) were positive, for GEA Group (-8%), SAP (-13%) and Symrise (-17%) it was the opposite. This points to asymmetric risk reward (for more on this: see blog post).
- In our 2024 review as well as in an earlier blog post, we found that combining directors’ dealings with the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) boosts replication performance. In 2025, 119 out of 209 managers’ transactions took place above the 200-day SMA yielding 64 trading signals. Investing 1,000 EUR would have resulted in a return close to 1,100 EUR. This equals a margin of nearly +110% which is roughly 5 times the DAX’s return.
Discover the directors’ dealings for superior investment returns with BOSS STOCKS
The results show that BOSS STOCKS can help you replicate directors’ dealings for superior investment returns with stocks. Combining manager’s transactions with selected technical analysis indicators such as the 200-day SMA improves the replication performance further.