From a fundamental perspective, this divergence in short-term performance could suggest that investors have in fact regained some confidence and have gradually begun to re-allocate assets to riskier corners of the market [consider Three Alternate Safe Haven Currency ETFs].

One piece of evidence that goes against this hypothesis, however, is that U.S. Treasury funds, like TLT and IEF, have also worked their way higher alongside rising stocks.

In fact, these ETFs have even better held their ground during gold’s recent slump, perhaps suggesting that investors aren’t quite convinced of the recent rallies in equity markets given the consistently worse-than-expected economic data dominating Wall Street [consider the new Simple (But Effective) Safe Haven ETFdb Model Portfolio].

This all coming as a global downturn in all markets seems inevitable. The S&P 500, which SPY follows by buying in the same mix and percentage of securities may be the only ETF you’d want to tackle right now. All others, sectors, shorts, longs, options, bonds, etc have been so erratic it’s making retirees and those looking to retire soon run for the door.

If there is a return, which looks like it may take a few years, buying all the way down during these times seems like a good idea to us, although others may suggest you get out and stay out for a while, if you don’t need the money for a few years (think 10 years) you may want to buy all the way down.

This is a good way of dollar cost averaging and allowing yourself to not worry about all the ups and downs in the market. Those ups and downs can drive you crazy. Buy the SPY and forget about it might be the only ETF investing strategy that can work.