Yet short term aside, within the context of 10 year performance strings ( over 90 years ) of a disciplined tactical allocation approach, "flat" years where "nothing works" are occasionally present and part of the process. Sometimes we have to "sit on our hands" in order for long term alpha to materialize ... https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KGHb49SE5Iugr2rLN_maqMH2fgX2s2rP8FYt0ohVJi0/edit?usp=sharing

There were also a few 'low volatility' ETFs that did ok, such as USMV, EFAV, IVW. But have to wonder how they will do if 2016 is similar to 2015. Another good year, or? And there were more than a few outliers that had a very good 2015 that were not just in or even mostly in the hot technology/biotech sector. DRIOX, PKB, domestic PRWAX, PKB; international DRIOX, TGVIX, TINGX, WAIOX, MAPIX; steady CSRSX. Special note goes to closed PRWCX.
Large cap growth generally had a very good year because of the FANGS and related holdings.
Isn't hindsight wonderful!

FYI: Long/short funds are one of those strategies that is wonderful in theory but very difficult to pull off successfully in practice. These funds go long the stocks they think are going to rise and go short the stocks they think are going to fall. So they should be able to make money in a wide variety of market environments because of their ability to alter their exposure to the market along with their stock-picking prowess.
The long/short pitch really began to gain steam following the excruciatingly long bear market from 2000-2002. The S&P 500 was down three straight years. These funds typically only have 40-60% long exposure to the stock market, so they are technically hedged against market losses (assuming their stock picks don’t blow-up).
Regards,
Ted
http://awealthofcommonsense.com/why-have-longshort-funds-performed-so-poorly/
M* Long/Short Fund Returns:
http://news.morningstar.com/fund-category-returns/longshort-equity/$FOCA$LO.aspx

No matter the asset class, no matter the environment, there always seems to be one or more outliers. While most others have taken a big haircut in EM stocks, Mr. Anindya Chatterjee of City National Rochdale went for the expensive styling, and so far he's cutting a good figure.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-29/how-one-investor-avoided-the-carnage-in-emerging-market-stocks
Since Chatterjee started the City National Rochdale Emerging Markets Fund on Dec. 14, 2011, he returned 53 percent for investors, even as emerging market stocks declined 0.5 percent. This year, with the MSCI Emerging Markets Index slumping 14 percent, Chatterjee’s $827 million fund is down 3.1 percent, beating 90 percent of peers for the fourth straight year. It’s far and away the best four-year performance among 67 U.S.-based emerging-market stock funds with at least $500 million in assets.
Heavily "thematic" and he's stickin' to it. Darn tootin'! Simply fortuitous, pinball wizard, or........?
Has anyone been monitoring this one?
http://www.citynationalrochdalefunds.com/Content/pdfs/quarterly/Emerging_Markets-3Q15.pdf

It's a supplemental distribution of .24752 that accounts for the .25 decline in today's NAV.

Relax. Supplemental dividends were distributed today. Nice ones at that!
PONDX = $0.24752
https://www.pimco.com/handlers/displaydocument.ashx?wd=Portfolio Statistics&fn=2015 Income Distributions - PIMS and EqS.pdf&id=9ifOaVwN8bvedzD2LKnBguAjyVbXHWZK9frjJMyYM7E4CMsNBng65BaTcqCYH0dO/Fz/QT5D1e8m9p2ao4xbmDfrHO2Fs/1uF+fFk9XEUqG5aWS3hE+SJmflkYXQZndm6jzOk3o8jC4/eiSHihLzaVcuSYvoXrG+dGihIGCau4QxdFSNu6fUNILeU5z35Kef+obx/MulQKwUuOh2dla7bPuoi3xuRU31ntDGI2Fd4XPIE7LhQp+osTEK5O9mQLv+4n9yzAlKWZLgFKcdu1DR+I+EHZnJ+cmgDmqcxcNRLlOPLIDE1OwTZk8ENyfWnPHB

Is it some kind of distribution? On 12/16/15 we had already capital gains distribution.

The richest people on Earth became a bit poorer this year.The world's richest people lost $19 billion in 2015
Warren Buffett, the world's third-richest person, shed $11.3 billion as Berkshire Hathaway Inc. had its first negative annual return since 2011
Dec 29, 2015 @ 10:09 am
By Bloomberg News
The world's 400 wealthiest individuals shed $19 billion in 2015, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Falling commodities prices and signs of a slower-growing China spooked investors around the world leading to the first annual decline for the daily wealth index since its 2012 debut.
The world's 400 richest people control a combined $3.9 trillion, according to the index, more than the GDP of every country on Earth except for the U.S., China and Japan.
TOP FIVE

The market declines knocked 49 billionaires off the daily ranking this year, including Glencore Plc. chief executive Ivan Glasenberg and Wang Jing, a Chinese telecom entrepreneur who personally invested $500 million to help Nicaragua build an alternative to the Panama Canal. Mr. Glasenberg lost two-thirds of his fortune as he raced to slash debt at the Swiss commodities company and Mr. Wang fell by about 86% this year.
Not the Banksters !
Elsewhere in the U.S., the rise of dominant investment banks, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. made billionaires of their respective chairmen, Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon, both of them rare instances of hired managers accumulating extraordinary wealth.
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20151229/FREE/151229943?template=printart
Bezo's AMZN
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AMZN&ei=IDWDVsOTOImPmAG12rmoCg
F A N G stocks here: MGGPX (no NFLX )http://portfolios.morningstar.com/fund/holdings?t=MGGPX&region=usa&culture=en-US
http://www.morganstanley.com/msim/portal/site/US/template.PAGE/?msimPageTitle=epd_comp&u=86bb14f4dc87daf33d3afb1051a9e009&fund=34183&tabName=epd_comp
Today’s ranking of the world’s richest people
http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/2015-12-29/cya
More F A N G
Daily Insights David Ott, Chief Investment Officer Acropolis Investment Management LLC
...questions and answers from the Barron’s annual ‘Test Your Wall Street Skills’ quiz.
Most of the ‘big’ questions have already been answered, but there are still some fun ones:
1. Which ‘FANG’ stocks will fare worst in 2016 – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix or Google?
On average, these stocks have gained approximately 84 percent so far this year – the best being Netflix, up 138 percent and the worst, if you can call it that, was Facebook, which gained 35 percent. Unfortunately, I can write about all four of them since not one is on our Approved List.
This is a tough one because the valuation on Amazon seems so absurd: the price-to-earnings ratio is 956! I thought it looked bad when it was around 100 or so, but betting against Jeff Bezos feels like a bad call.
Google is the only one with a PE ratio of less than 100, so I wouldn’t think they would be the worst, so if it’s between Facebook and Netflix, I would have to say Netflix. I mean, why aren’t all media companies streaming their content at this point? What happens if Apple or Google wants in – isn’t it bad enough that Amazon is offering streaming? That said, I still wouldn’t short Netflix.
http://acrinv.com/market-forecasts-part-2/

Fixed income cef's with low/no junk corporates, and munis of the lower IG/non-IG persuasion have beaten the S&P 500 pretty handily. Many muni, preferred, and mortgage-heavy cef's are up roughly in the range of 6-12% (some even better), and HY muni oef's (e.g., PMHIX, NHMAX, LHIAX, even the staid VWAHX) are up ~ 4-5.5%.
A fair number of investments worked this year; what didn't work was stock and taxable bond market index funds and junk corporate bonds.
Meanwhile, the cef "experts" at RiverNorth are flat to negative in the highly touted RNDLX (which, with about half in Gundlach sleeves, means a solid negative performance in the cef sleeve), apparently insisting on holding value-trap junky cef's just because the relative pricing is low.

Great post AndyJ. I am a bit anxious about the New Year. Junk corporates best month historically has always been January. It is certainly beaten down and unloved. I have put 10% there already just in case with the remainder still in the junk munis (ABTYX, PYMDX, EIHYX) Will move further into the junk corporates if the market cooperates.

Fixed income cef's with low/no junk corporates, and munis of the lower IG/non-IG persuasion have beaten the S&P 500 pretty handily. Many muni, preferred, and mortgage-heavy cef's are up roughly in the range of 6-12% (some even better), and HY muni oef's (e.g., PHMIX, NHMAX, LHIAX, even the staid VWAHX) are up ~ 4-5.5%.
A fair number of investments worked this year; what didn't work was stock and taxable bond market index funds and junk corporate bonds.
Meanwhile, the cef "experts" at RiverNorth are flat to negative in the highly touted RNDLX (which, with about half in Gundlach sleeves, means a solid negative performance in the cef sleeve), apparently insisting on holding value-trap junky cef's just because the relative pricing is low.

FYI: Whitebox Advisors, the $3.85 billion investment firm whose equity head Jason Cross resigned this month, plans to liquidate its three mutual funds on Jan. 19 after losses and redemptions in 2015.
The firm, founded by Chief Executive Officer Andrew Redleaf in 2000 and best known for running hedge funds, announced the move on its website Monday.
“It was a strategic decision,” Amara Kaiyalethe, a spokeswoman for Minneapolis-based Whitebox, said in a telephone interview. “People were redeeming and the concentration risk to our investors who were remaining was just too high for our comfort.”
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-29/redleaf-s-whitebox-to-liquidate-its-mutual-funds-next-month
Whitebox Website:
https://www.whiteboxmutualfunds.com/

Quoth @TMFOtter: "Bloomberg describes 2015 as a year nothing worked in investing. Know what does work? Having a timeframe more than 1 year."
I couldn't agree more!!!

www.dividend.com/dividend-stocks/financial/property-management/?utm_source=Dividend.com&utm_campaign=6b12a56f00-Free_Engage_Content_Dispatch_LI_12_28_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5465108463-6b12a56f00-34547085&goal=0_5465108463-6b12a56f00-34547085

@MJG:
>> if a portfolio were assembled using all 10 funds in equal parts, that portfolio would have delivered a higher compound return with less standard deviation than an S&P 500 benchmark.
I have been following that analysis since the 1980s when some of these Selects were introduced, and have found it to be mostly true as well, somewhat inexplicably, and always wondered why Fido did not offer a fund of funds.
>> Diversification is alive and well.
You are saying 10 Selects is more diversified than SP500?
>> So is the Aerospace and Defense industry. That's a huge industry employing over 2 million workers. It's like a battleship; it's hard to change direction.
As someone who has been downsized three times the last decade from large and taken-over defense R&D companies, I can attest that this is not altogether true, not at all.
>> The commercial part of it will continue to grow slowly (like 3% this year) as aircraft deliveries are solid. The military budget is similarly solid.
Uh, maybe in some senses, but mutual funds do not invest in (say) VA hospitals, and the Darpa-dependent (ONR, ARL, NSF) companies whose work and products may get hit in an HRC administration may not do as well as in the past. Otoh, Fido manager track these sorts of developments and budgets funding very closely and presciently.

Hi InformalEconomist,
Thank you for bringing the discussion back on topic. We sure have a tendency to divert our attentions elsewhere.
Fidelity does have an impressive lineup of fund choices. I ran a quick analysis of the .10 funds mentioned in the referenced article. Over the last 10 years, if a portfolio were assembled using all 10 funds in equal parts, that portfolio would have delivered a higher compound return with less standard deviation than an S&P 500 benchmark. Diversification is alive and well.
So is the Aerospace and Defense industry. That's a huge industry employing over 2 million workers. It's like a battleship; it's hard to change direction. The commercial part of it will continue to grow slowly (like 3% this year) as aircraft deliveries are solid. The military budget is similarly solid. The need for American military supremacy is not challenged by either our population or our elected government officials.
Have a happy New Year. I certainly will.
Best Wishes.

I should maybe take that back, since Jeb's econ and tax policies are laughably destructive:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/11/10/jeb_bush_and_marco_rubio_want_absolutely_insane_tax_cuts.html
Whoa.

FYI:
A 2.2% gain in the S&P 500 is roughly the best anyone could do

@Ted Except for the Linkster! ;)

@ MFO Members: It was not the double-digit year I expected, but I can complain about my fund portfolio.
Regards,
Ted
As Of 12/24/15:
PRHSX: 13.70%
FBTCX: 10.70%
QQQ: 10.16%
PFF: 3.78%
SPY: 2.15%
Total Average Return:
8.098%

Continuing....
Most of the sectors are fairly close, except for Consumer Cyclical and Financial Services - pity. But the broad "super sectors" (Cyclical, Sensitive & Defensive) are spot on. It is also a shame that the blended E.R., at 45 bps, is 16 bps higher than SPHQ.
But again, after March 2016, SPHQ will no longer "be" SPHQ. It will be a very different E T F with very different holdings, "trying to pass" as the old SPHQ.
Another comment. If you look at the [Documents] tab of SPHQ, and open up the fact sheet,
you will see a graph suggesting that the ETF has underperformed the S&P 500. While this is true over the life of SPHQ, it is not true since the SPHQ index last changed at the end of June, 2010.
According to M*, over the last 5 years, SPHQ has outperformed Vanguard's S&P 500 Index Fund Admiral Class by about 73 bps per year, with risk (measured either by Standard Deviation or Beta) that was about 10% less than the 500 Index.
In other words, by stapling the new post-June 2010 index onto the SPHQ in 2010, Powershares produced an E T F that looked like an underperformer, in their own marketing materials.
Other risk measures from M* are available here:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/ratings-risk.action?t=SPHQ
Morningstar sector allocations are below, for MPGFX, SPLV, their 50/50 blend, and SPHQ.

Exp Ratio	65 	25	45 	29 
Sector	        MPGFX	SPLV	BLEND	SPHQ
Basic Materials	11.60 	4.31    7.96 	6.79 
Consumer Cyc	5.13    3.01 	4.07 	19.21 
Financial Svcs	12.99 	16.99 	14.99 	4.71 
Real Estate	0.00 	6.82 	3.41 	0.83 
Cyclical	29.72 	31.13 	30.43 	31.54 
Comm Svcs	0.00 	4.17 	2.09 	0.79 
Energy	        2.83 	0.00 	1.42 	1.26 
Industrials	32.25 	19.31 	25.78 	29.03 
Technology	7.37 	0.00 	3.69 	4.17 
Sensitive	42.45 	23.48 	32.97 	35.25 
Cons Defensive	8.69 	20.44 	14.57 	16.77 
Healthcare	19.15 	13.48 	16.32 	10.45 
Utilities	0.00 	11.44 	5.72 	5.97 
Defensive	27.84 	45.36 	36.60 	33.19