As we turn the calender to the third quarter, we wanted to take a minute today to review the performance of various asset classes.  The capital markets provided excessive volatility over the past three months, which can be seen via the CBOE SPX Volatility Index.  The VIX started the quarter at 15, and climbed 80% up to 27 by June 4th.  As of close on Friday, the index was nearly back down to where it began Q2 with a reading of 17.  Not surprisingly, Fixed Income was the only asset class represented in the table below that had a positive absolute performance during the last quarter, with the specific strength in US Treasuries.  On the other side of the coin, it was Commodities and Developed International markets that caught the most of the brunt in terms of performance.  For US Equities, there was preferential returns found in Large Cap names in a general sense, but it was the PowerShares DWA Technical Leaders Index (PDP) that came out on top based on those in the table below allowing it to maintain its solid margin of outperformance year to date.  Notice too, that the PowerShares DWA Emerging Markets Technical Leader ETF (PIE) was also able to outperform its benchmark for the year by nearly 3%.