New highs in US Large Cap stocks did not follow through to many other asset classes in Q4 2014, largely because of currency shifts (US Dollar gains vs. virtually all other currencies which make foreign currency denominated investments worth less on a relative basis), lagging economic performance in Europe, and a sharp decline in energy prices (oil down over 40% in Q4 alone). The list bellow shows performance for a select set of asset classes using representative ETFs (or spot price in the case of a commodity) as a measure for each:

As always, I’ll provide the reminder that past performance is not indicative of future results and that long-term expected returns (used for planning purposes) remain unchanged.