2012s best performing ETFs and stocks

By Dian Vujovich

Before the New Year gets out of hand and 2012s market performances are all but forgotten, here’s a look back at the top performing exchange traded funds, (ETFs) and stocks of last year.

The folks at the Bespoke Investment Group do a great job of providing performance results on various investments all year long.  What follows is a snapshot of how a variety of different asset class ETFs performed in 2012.  Then, e a list of top performing stocks. Data all from Bespoke.

ETFs

Before  looking at a variety of year-end returns, in a nutshell international equity markets outperformed  those in the US. The top country ETF was Mexico (EWW), up over 32 percent. Next in line, Germany (EWG), up well over 28 percent.

Here at home the top two ETF winners were  the XLF, (the Financial ETF),  up over 26 percent. Behind it was the Consumer Discretionary’s XLY, up 21.5 percent.

Re our markets in general, the QQQ, (symbol for the Nasdaq 100’s ETF),  closed 2012 up 16.6 percent. Not far behind it, the S&P Midcap 400  (IJH) gained 16.08 percent.

A couple of stinkers in the lot: Utilities, the XLU ended the year down nearly 3 percent, and Natural Gas (UNG) and Oil ((USO) off 26.8 percent and 12.4 percent respectively.

View the entire 2012 Bespoke ETF performance list at: http://tinyurl.com/bhluhkf.

Stocks

Here are some of the top performing stocks in the Russell 3000 last year, according to Bespoke.

In their list of the 50 companies  that gained  the most, the average return for the group was 135 percent. But that’s nothing compared to the No.1 performer: It was BioDelivery Sciences  (BDSI) up 435.3 percent at year’s end.

Three companies whose stocks gained more than 300 percent include technology company Ellie Mae (ELLI); builder Hovnanian Enterprises (HOV) and the pharma company Arena Pharmaceuticals (ARNA).

From the Bespoke story comes this common sense reminder: ” While most of these stocks will not see a repeat performance of 2012, they’re nearly all currently in strong uptrends with plenty of momentum behind them….”

View the entire list of 50 top Russell 3000 stocks in 2012 at

http://tinyurl.com/be6tf7h .