Stocks remained strong in March. Investments considered safe havens did poorly, from bonds to precious metals. Even the market volatility measure, the VIX, slid as the stock market’s potential downside seemed to shrink. There will be no double-dip recession, and perhaps no collapse of Europe. Even though investors optimism on US stocks continued to grow, the underperformance in what typically would do well as investors embraced risk - emerging markets - continued.

Typically emerging market stocks rebound faster than the US stock market when the market heads back up (like we saw in January) but there seems to be some fears around that the emerging markets era of outperformance is waning and the US may be more insulated than faster growing markets from Europe’s ongoing troubles. 

The big gains in foreign markets doesn’t quite wipe out last year’s losses, but it’s a good start to the year. The bond market highlights this re-embracing of risk. Higher risk bonds topped the list in January with emerging market bond funds up around 5%, followed by high yield bonds up over 3%. The safest government bond funds were roughly flat to slightly up. 

For 2011 our Conservative Portfolio was up a respectable 3.5% while our Aggressive Portfolio’s winners couldn’t overtake the drag of foreign markets and financials, giving us a 0.41% loss for the year. A drop of less than one-half of one percent may compare favorably to most global portfolios (the Morningstar Global Allocation category was down about 4% for 2011), but we consider it a disappointing result.