Last Year's Scorecard

ETF investment matrix from Bespoke Investment Group and can be linked here.  {Double clicking on the chart will make it bigger and easier to see.}

A couple of observations.  

1. US stock related ETFs did very well last year.  The S&P 500 ETF was up 29.69% The Rydex S&P 500 equal weighted index performed better.  It was up 33.63%.  {RSP is one of our largest investments.} 

2. As did some unexpected sectors.  Notice that consumer discretionary was the best performing sector in 2013 followed closely by health care.  Common sense would have thought that if the consumer was as hard up as people thought there wouldn't have been the money to propel discretionary higher.  They fight over the Affordable Care Act would have led you to believe that health related ETFs should have struggled.

3.  Fixed income did struggle.  You know I think bonds are lousy investments.

4.  Emerging markets had a dismal year.  Markets that were huge commodity producers didn't fare much better {See  Australia}.  Commodities and in particular gold and silver were taken out and shot.

5.  Europe did much better than pundits predicted.  While it isn't shown on the chart, Europe as represented by the Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF {VGK} was up 24.38% last year. {Source Morningstar.}

*Long ETFs related to the S&P 500 and RSP in client and personal accounts.  Long XLV and XLY in certain client accounts.  Long certain ETFs related to international, emerging markets and VGK in client and personal accounts.  Long GLD in certain client accounts.  We are also long many of the different ETFs on the list above.  I have mentioned specifically those that I highlighted.