Looking Back at Fourth Quarter 2011

This past quarter reminded us about the value of being patient with the investment markets After a very disappointing third quarter, our investments performed up to our expectations. Generally we saw gains in most of our investment selections.

When you consider our conservative approach… our goal was to lower risk by holding larger than normal money market allocations. We came through a volatile period in fine shape. From the client comments we have received over the past two weeks, this effort was successful and seemed to be appreciated.

We did some year-end analysis of how our investments performed over the last quarter 0f 2011. It was interesting that the top three investments for the fourth quarter were Real Estate ETF (+16.91%), Vanguard Dividend Index ETF (+14.59%), and Vanguard Healthcare Index ETF (+13.7%). The worst three were the Silver ETF (+0.97%), Barclays Aggregate Bond Index ETF (+1.45%), and the Short Term Bond Index (+1.48%). In 2010 silver was the star and real estate was just okay. Fortunately, all our picks were profitable for the fourth quarter.