Q4 2012 Client Letter
2012 was a great surprise for many. Daily headlines of financial disarray in Europe, the buildup to the Presidential election, and the final hours of the Fiscal Cliff drama, made for a year’s worth of good TV and a great deal of worry for the markets. With such news on the airwaves, many investors elected to stay on the sidelines. In hindsight, such risk aversion was the wrong path as the performance of global equity markets beat all estimates. For the year, the domestic market as measured by the S&P 500 was up 16.0%, and the global markets as measured by the MSCI EAFE and the MSCI Emerging Market indexes were up 17.9% and 18.6% respectively.