Best and Worst Performing Asset Classes In 2014
What “sport” has 1000’s of teams, no rules, gets played night and day across the world with a scoreboard updated minute by minute, day by day, year by year, and decade by decade? It’s none other than the “game” of investing, where a new year is a great time to see where different assets finished in relation to each other.
Now, we’ve said before that comparing different asset class performances is like comparing apples and oranges, so we won’t make too much of Managed Futures coming in “second place” But, hey, if you can’t trumpet managed futures good year on a managed futures blog, where can you do it? We’re just happy Managed Futures proved that they have unique return drivers, and can perform when stocks are moving up or down. (For more on how and why managed futures performed the way they did, see our 2014 Managed Futures Strategy Review).
Elsewhere, world stocks slid in December, to be the only other asset class finishing in the negative on the year other than commodities… talk about a tough year for diversified portfolios.
P.S – If you’re looking at commodities and wondering if we looked at the data incorrectly, the answer is no… commodities did end down -14.32% in December alone, down -32% on the year.
(Disclaimer: Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results)
(Disclaimer: past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.)
Source: All ETF performance data from Morningstar.com
Sources: Managed Futures = Newedge CTA Index, Cash = 13 week T-Bill rate,
Bonds = Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (BND),
Hedge Funds= DJCS Broad Hedge Fund Index;
Commodities = iShares GSCI ETF (GSG);
Real Estate = iShares DJ Real Estate ETF (IYR);
World Stocks = iShares MSCI ACWI ex US Index Fund ETF (ACWX);
US Stocks =US Stocks = SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY)
