An 86% distribution? Who even thought that was POSSIBLE?

Well so much for the "Wonders of ETF Tax Efficiency" presentation I was putting together. Holy IRS Bonanza, Batman ... now THAT is a distribution. Oh I remember the good old days of the (was it 8%?) capital gains distribution in the Vanguard small-cap fund or the 15%-ish distribution of the Webs that tracked the somewhat ill-designed MSCI country indexes ... but THIS one, THESE, will go down in capital gains distribution history.

And thank you H&R (Hougan) for that tax lecture. For the record, we are NOT tax professionals and we do NOT provide tax advice; CONSULT a tax professional. I honestly did not realize the tax rules around such distributions were so twisted. My first instinct was also that the gains could fairly easily be offset. I don't know ... this is a wacky cap to what has been a very, very wacky year in ETFs.

Bond ETFs trading 26% off their (supposed) NAV, inverse funds gone wobbly when short exposure was off, defaults, threatened defaults, 0% Treasury yields. Wow. My head is still spinning from the last two months, and the New Year's festivities are not even yet under way.

So I suppose it will be good riddance to a 2008 year in which portfolios dropped 40 or 50% of their values and the world spiraled into a mess that we'll be climbing out of for years. The only silver lining is that the financial world is starting ... STARTING to make some sense again after the madness that came on the heels of the madness that had us all thinking the gravy train would never end.