Every Monday, on Weekly Market Movers, I delve into companies that sat down with Stockhouse for an interview over the past week, keen to shed light on the value propositions behind some of the most exciting small-cap and micro-cap stocks trading today.
Value creation, however, does not occur in a straight line, with the combination of macroeconomic sentiment, industry health and idiosyncratic operations likely to render any company’s trajectory random over the short term.
This is why, for our year-end review, I’ll revisit my three best and worst-performing stocks of 2025, with eyes on situating their underlying companies’ achievements over the past 12 months within an assessment of their long-term prospects.
Here are the worst-performing stocks year-to-date (YTD):
- Spirit Blockchain, 94.44 per cent loss.
- Jupiter Neurosciences, 89.18 per cent loss.
- Oregen Energy, 78.79 per cent loss.
Here are the best-performing stocks:
- Lahontan Gold, 483.33 per cent gain.
- Almonty Industries, 658.55 per cent gain.
- Santacruz Silver Mining, 901.67 per cent gain.
Let’s dive in.
The worst-performing stocks of 2025
Spirit Blockchain
Spirit Blockchain, our worst-performing stock, profiled on March 21, 2025, focuses on developing and operating blockchain-based financial tokenization platforms, primarily in the European digital asset market.
This article is disseminated in partnership with Spirit Blockchain, Jupiter Neurosciences, Oregen Energy, Lahontan Gold, Almonty Industries and Santacruz Silver. It is intended to inform investors and should not be taken as a recommendation or financial advice.
The company’s goal of building recurring revenue from licensing and support services has been unsuccessful over the past few years, posting inconsistent revenue and consistent net losses since 2021, driven by blockchain and cryptocurrency’s slow and volatile progress towards earning a place in our everyday lives.
Spirit Blockchain’s portfolio, concentrated in structured products, trading, wealth management and financial analytics, all geared towards the digital asset space, offers pure-play exposure to a high-potential sector that is still very much in the venture stage, despite its multi-trillion-dollar market capitalization, and as such, requires investors to view shares as options on exponential returns.
While the stock’s near total loss certainly makes it a poster-child for the risks of early-stage investments, the company’s numerous ongoing initiatives make it an active participant in finance’s potentially decentralized future.
Spirit Blockchain stock (CSE:SPIR) last traded at C$0.015.
Jupiter Neurosciences
Jupiter Neurosciences, our runner-up for worst-performing stock, profiled on February 7, 2025, tracks a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company dedicated to meeting unmet needs in neuroinflammation and healthy aging.
JOTROL, Jupiter’s proprietary resveratrol formulation, noted for its unmated bioavailability, while avoiding the gastrointestinal toxicity common in competing treatments, lies at the heart of the company’s therapeutic pipeline, which is currently focused on central nervous system (CNS) disorders, rare diseases and supplements through its Nugevia line of products.
The company is currently evaluating JOTROL’s effectiveness in a fully-funded phase-IIa clinical trial for Parkinson’s, following initial data showing beneficial neurological effects, with eyes on further studies on Alzheimer’s Disease, Mucopolysaccharidoses Type I, Friedreich’s Ataxia and MELAS.
Concurrently, the Nugevia brand is being rolled out supported by high-profile ambassadors, including legendary golfer Annika Sörenstam and former NBA All-Star Chris Webber.
Jupiter’s depressed share price is part and parcel for young drug development companies, whose flagship products are at least 5 years away from potentially hitting the market. That said, its early success with Parkinson’s, supported by a leadership team with backgrounds in biotech, rare diseases and pharmaceutical development, significantly de-risks an investment for the high-risk sleeve of your portfolio, leveraging momentum from numerous study, revenue and distribution milestones expected in 2026.
Jupiter Neurosciences stock (NASDAQ:JUNS) last traded at US$1.13.
Oregen Energy
Last in our top-three worst-performing stocks of 2025 is Oregen Energy, an investment company after prospective oil and gas opportunities in Africa originally profiled on September 2, 2025.
Oregen’s flagship asset is a 33.95 per cent stake in Block 2712A in the Orange Basin offshore Namibia, one of the world’s most attractive emerging oil plays, which includes numerous recent multi-billion-barrel discoveries by major oil and gas companies, including Shell and Galp, the latter pair alone representing approximately 12.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
A technical report on the block published in 2025 shows analogous geology to major discoveries, among them Shell’s Graff and TotalEnergies’ Venus, whose at least 5.1 billion barrels makes it Africa’s largest-ever Sub-Saharan discovery.
Oregen’s leadership team, stacked with energy, technical and capital markets experience, is currently reviewing historical seismic, well and basin data to determine drill targets, attract exploration partners and kick off a program envisioned by late 2026, with ample evidence suggesting that the company is on track to close the gap between its micro-cap size and multi-billion-barrel potential.
Oregen Energy stock (CSE:ORNG) last traded at C$0.07.
The best-performing stocks of 2025
Lahontan Gold
Transitioning to our best-performing stocks of 2025, we have Lahontan Gold, an explorer and developer profiled on September 8, 2025, advancing four gold and silver properties in Nevada’s prolific Walker Lane trend.
Lahontan’s main focus, its 28.3-square-kilometre Santa Fe Mine project, produced 359,202 ounces of gold and 702,067 ounces of silver between 1988 and 1995, and features a compliant resource estimate of 1.539 million ounces of gold equivalent (AuEq) indicated and 411,000 ounces AuEq inferred, representing more than US$8 billion in the ground at the US$4,337 price per ounce on December 19.
The company is actively ushering Santa Fe towards production, with updates to the resource estimate and 2025 preliminary economic assessment expected in 2026, as it concurrently spin its drills at the West Santa Fe project, only 13 km away, where leadership sees the potential for an up to 1-million-ounce near-surface gold and silver resource.
With exploration and development catalysts lined up in 2026, and a leadership team reinforced by global gold experience across the mining lifecycle, investors should find numerous reasons for conviction in additional shareholder value moving forward.
Lahontan Gold stock (TSXV:LG) last traded at C$0.18.
Almonty Industries
Our runner-up for top-performing stock on Weekly Market Movers in 2025 is Almonty Industries, a tungsten explorer, developer and producer profiled on January 31, 2025, on track to become the top supplier to Western-allied nations by mid-2027.
Tungsten, essential for armor, munitions and electronics manufacturing, is a key component underpinning national security, making China’s more than 80 per cent control of global production and ongoing export restrictions a worrying state of affairs.
Almonty’s flagship Sangdong Mine in South Korea is taking center stage as a viable solution, rapidly ramping up to a capacity equivalent to more than 80 per cent of global non-China tungsten supply. The mine is complemented by existing production at the company’s Panasqueria mine in Portugal and planned developments at earlier-stage projects in Spain and the United States, laying the groundwork for long-term shareholder value.
As commercial production at Sangdong grows near, investors are eagerly awaiting to see how Almonty’s leadership – including a CEO well-versed in the tungsten supply chain and a supporting cast of strategically chosen former military and government decision-makers – is able to translate the company’s promising assets into attractive income statements to justify further returns.
The broader market has been optimistic at the prospect, with Almonty stock (TSX:AII) nearing an 8x return YTD, last trading at C$11.53, in line with the company’s expectations of a 30-40 per cent net income margin at a conservative US$350 per metric ton unit, representing a more than 57 per cent discount to the high-end tungsten price of US$825 on December 12.
Santacruz Silver Mining
We wrap up 2025’s Weekly Market Movers with a look at our best-performing stock, Santacruz Silver, a mineral explorer, mine developer and producer in Mexico and Bolivia that has generated 10.6 million ounces of silver equivalent YTD, including significant yields of zinc, copper and lead.
The mining powerhouse, which came in second in our mid-2025 review back in June, delivered record production in Bolivia in 2023 and in Mexico in 2024, as per the company’s most recent investor deck, positioning operations to continue creating shareholder value through increasingly efficient production. Notable arrows in the company’s quiver towards this goal include:
- Consolidated all-in sustaining costs of only US$26.41 per ounce of silver sold, less than half of the precious metal’s US$67.27 price tag as of December 19.
- An ascent into net income profitability in 2024, raking in C$151.6 million, plus another US$46.7 million through three quarters in 2025.
- A demonstrated multi-year history of lowering debt, from US$351 million in 2023 to US$215 million as of Q3 2025, none of which is long-term debt.
Looking ahead, Santacruz’s profitable operations are unfolding on a runway paved by more than 290 million ounces of silver equivalent resources and more than 53 million ounces in reserves, plus the flexibility afforded by US$59 million in cash as of Q3, offering high-quality exposure to silver demand as the metal continues to mature in both the investing and technological landscapes.
With leading institutions, such as Marex and BMO Capital Markets, predicting silver to be top of mind for investors in 2026, Santacruz Silver is thinking bigger and better into the new year, including a planned NASDAQ listing expected to take investor awareness to new heights.
Santacruz Silver stock (TSXV:SCZ) last traded at C$12.02.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you on January 12, 2026, for a new edition of Weekly Market Movers, where I delve into companies that sat down with Stockhouse for an interview over the past week. Here’s last week’s article, in case you missed it.
*Returns and stock prices as of December 19, 2025.
Join the discussion: Find out what investors are saying about our best and worst-performing stocks of 2025 on the Spirit Blockchain Capital Inc., Jupiter Neurosciences Inc., Oregen Energy Corp., Lahontan Gold Corp., Almonty Industries Inc. and Santacruz Silver Mining Ltd. Bullboards, and make sure to explore the rest of Stockhouse’s stock forums and message boards.
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