Goodbye 1Q

For the first quarter of 2008, the Dow lost -7.6%, the S&P 500 -9.9%, the Russell 2000 -10.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite -14.1%.

After the market closed, I fired up my performance scan to see which ETFs outperformed and underperformed the most. Nothing should be great surprise here if you've been following the market:

Clearly, being aggressively short has been the play so far this year as well as to be long natural gas, metals, homebuilders, commodities, agriculture, and some currencies. Meanwhile, those who've been leveraged into tech, alternative energy, brokers, China, health care have had a very tough go. More often than not, first quarter trends "tend" to hold true for the remainder of the year, so keep that in mind as we begin the next quarter.

I know many of you would like to know what I think about the markets after the past couple of weeks, but as many of you know after I take some time away I give myself a few days to evaluate and get my feel back for the market. It would be entirely irresponsible for me to provide you market analysis that isn't backed up by a lot of research and proper evaluation. Since I tuned out of the market completely during our vacation, I'm very much starting at ground zero again.

For most of the week, I'll be doing everything I can to get back up and running again, but by Friday I should be in decent shape to provide some fresh perspective. See you tomorrow.