Lately, it’s been hard to find a safety zone in the markets. Most key classes are down for the YTD, 4-week and 2-week periods. Only commodities, oil in particular, have been bright spots. The following charts use these ETFs as proxies for key asset classes: VTI - US stock market EFA - non-US developed stock markets EEM - non-US emerging stock markets VNQ - US equity REITs DJP - global commodities* USO - oil alone AGG - US aggregate bond market * DJP represents the DJ-AIG Commodity Index which is a “balanced” index. It limits any one of the 19 commodities it follows to a 15% weight, and any of the 5 commodity groups to a 33% weight. Since oil has been the overwhelming performer lately, DJP underweights oil in comparison to its world significance. The S&P GSCI Commodity index represents its commodities on a world production basis. For a more detailed ...

At the end of April I informed you about new ETF focused on emerging stock markets in Central and Eastern Europe. iShares released MSCI Eastern Europe (IEER.L). ETF is listed on London Stock Exchange, Borsa Italiana, Euronext Amsterdam, Euronext Paris, Xetra Frankfurt and SWX Swiss exchange.After SPDR S&P Emerging Europe (GUR) and Central Europe & Russia Fund CEF (CEE) it's third fund with exposure on CEE markets.As you can energy sector dominates followed by financial. Both make up more that half of ETF structure.ETF constituents: Lukoil (LUKOY) 9,8%, Gazprom (OGZPY) 9,3%, Surgutneftegaz (SGTZY) 5,6%, Unified Energy System (USERY) 5%, MMC Norilsk Nickel (NILSY) 4,9%, OTP Bank (OTPGF) 4,5%, CEZ 4,2 %.http://stockweb.blogspot.com/atom.xml

We believe it is important to look at return and volatility risk in both absolute and relative terms. For relative performance, we think the 10-year US Treasury bond is a good base to use, because is it relevant to all asset classes.

It relates as well to stocks as to bonds, to real estate, to commodities or to just about any asset class.

Tables of numbers have their place and use, but we also believe a picture is worth a thousand words. We try to put important data into visual formats to make it easier to see meaning. Some people do better with numbers in tables and some do better with pictures. Here is our way of visualizing risk adjusted return.

We call our proprietary way of calculating returns and volatility relative to government bonds “Treasury Indexed Quotients (TIQ)”, a registered trademark.

Each month, we calculate the TIQ for

...