New Delhi, Dec. 31 -- Dalal Street investors went through a roller-coaster ride in 2025 as their resilience was tested amid improving domestic fundamentals and global uncertainty, prompting them to adopt a selective approach rather than broad-based buying, leading to divergent performance in the Indian stock market.

Retail investors moved away from their once-favoured small-cap stocks amid multiple earnings-per-share (EPS) downgrades by analysts, as earnings in the segment remained weak, causing the Nifty Smallcap 100 index to drop 5.6% in 2025, marking its first annual drop in two years.

While signs of earnings improvement emerged in both mid- and large-cap segments during the recently concluded September quarter, gains were largely ca...