Your Portfolio Is Up 12%. Is That a Good Portfolio Return? Here's the Test
5 min read
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5 min read
Say your portfolio is up 12% this year. That sounds good. But "good" is not a number you can judge on its own. It only means something next to a benchmark, a reference index you compare your own return against so you can tell whether your result came from skill, or just from being invested while the market happened to rise.
Here is why that matters more than it sounds. The same 12% return, measured against two different real benchmarks in 2026, tells two completely different stories.
Against Indonesia's IHSG: the Jakarta Composite Index closed 2025 at 8,646.94 points and closed at 6,351.13 on 5 August 2026, a fall of about 26.6% year to date. A portfolio up 12% while the benchmark it is measured against fell 26.6% is not a good year. It is an exceptional one, roughly 39 percentage points ahead of the index.
Against the S&P 500: the US benchmark was up about 11.4% for 2026 as of 4 August 2026, after closing at a record 7,736.52 points. A portfolio up 12% against that benchmark is barely ahead of the market by about 0.6 percentage points, which is close to a rounding error once fees are counted. That is not skill. That is roughly what holding the index itself would have handed you for free.
Excess return = Your return − Benchmark return
| Scenario | Your return | Benchmark | Benchmark return | Excess return | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | +12% | IHSG (Jakarta Composite) | −26.6% YTD (30 Dec 2025 to 5 Aug 2026) | +38.6 pts | Exceptional |
| B | +12% | S&P 500 | +11.4% YTD (as of 4 Aug 2026) | +0.6 pts | Roughly market return |
Same investor, same 12%, same year. The only thing that changed is the ruler.
That 12% itself is also worth a second look before you benchmark it against anything. The number your broker's statement shows and the number that actually reflects your invested capital are often not the same figure, and a benchmark comparison built on the wrong one is unfair before it even starts.
This is not a typo. 2026 has been a genuinely brutal year for Indonesian equities. The rupiah crisis that began in the first half of the year, a balance of payments deficit, an oil price shock from the Middle East, and Bank Indonesia raising its policy rate to defend the currency all pushed the IHSG down more than 30% at its worst point, before a partial recovery brought it back to the low 6,000s by August. If your portfolio holds a meaningful weight in IDX-listed shares and only lost a little, or made money, in that stretch, you actually beat the market badly, even if the headline number on your statement looks unremarkable next to a US-focused portfolio's return.
A benchmark is only useful if it matches what you actually hold. Three rules keep the comparison honest:
Most investors do not hold purely IDX or purely US stocks. If your portfolio is split, say 60% Indonesian equities and 40% US equities, a single index will always misjudge you. A blended benchmark, 60% IHSG return plus 40% S&P 500 return for the same period, is the fairer test. Without it, a portfolio that is genuinely well-run can look like it underperformed simply because it was compared to the wrong 100% weighting.
Open your Portfolio Health view on your NetWort dashboard and look at your actual return for the same window used above, 30 December 2025 to today. Then check your holdings mix on the Market page, which tracks IDX and US sentiment side by side, to decide which benchmark, or which blend, is the fair one for what you actually hold. A return that beats the right benchmark is worth celebrating. A return that just matches it, dressed up as a good year, is worth knowing too.
This is the same underlying lesson as why a portfolio's average return and its actual compounded result can tell two different stories: a single headline number, without the comparison that gives it meaning, can flatter or undersell what your money actually did.