Money managers like to show their progress year to date (YTD), which is okay, I suppose, except that 2008 wasn't your typical year. It seems inappropriate to have the year's losses wiped away by the change of the calendar when so many people will be concerned not with YTD, but with what it will take to get them back to where they were before economic disaster hit.
As with many academics, my retirement funds are managed by TIAA-CREF. On December 31, 2008, I recorded the YTD performance of the Variable Annuity Accounts, that is, their performance for all of 2008. I did the same for 2009. The following table contains
| Stock | -39.68% | +32.04% | +25.55% |
| Global Equities | -42.29% | +32.91% | +30.37% |
| Growth | -39.78% | +36.54% | +21.62% |
| Equity Index | -37.50% | +27.86% | +25.14% |
| Social Change | -23.45% | +22.41% | +6.72% |
| Bond Market | +1.24% | +7.00% | -- |
| Inflation-Linked Bond | -1.78% | +9.58% | -- |
| Money Market | +2.44% | +0.11 | -- |
| Real Estate | -14.15% | -27.64% | +60.98% |
and here's where we are at the moment.