Between the rock star deaths and a bitter presidential election won by not the most popular candidate, 2016 got a bit of a rap. But I’m going to miss it, professionally speaking.

After a big turnaround in the spring our recommendations significantly outperformed the broad energy rally during the second half of the year, with multiple recent picks ranking among the biggest winners.

Securities we recommended all year long returned 29.5% in 2016, vs. the 30.9% return (including dividends) for the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSE: XLE). We fell just a smidge shy despite favoring the safer pipeline plays that lagged the rally. Another benchmark we track, the Alerian MLP Index, returned 18.3% with distributions.

Of the 24 picks made in the course of 2016, 23 were in the black for us at year end. Three of our recommendations returned more  than 50%, and five others at least 24%. We struck pay dirt by timing the turnaround in coal ahead of the pack, scooping up an orphaned solar yieldco at a panicky low and buying shale drillers just ahead of OPEC’s action to curb supply. The 24 selections made in 2016 averaged a gain of 17.2% despite an average holding period of just four and a half months.

But we didn’t get everything right of course, and the 18 recommendations dropped during the year averaged a loss of 23.7% beforehand. Tanker stocks did a lot of the damage here during the first half of the year, before an overdue scuttling of those positions. So did the decision back in January to discard our entire slate of shale drillers. As noted in the midyear review, that choice spared subscribers who followed our advice a lot of near-term pain. But we didn’t get back into those names in the spring, opting to ride the rebound elsewhere.

Averaging the returns from many positions held for only a part of the year does not yield a result comparable to a portfolio return. For instance, if you made 20% in a stock over two months, sold it and then consecutively reinvested the proceeds in five other identical winning situations in the course of the year, you’d end up with a compounded annual return of 149% on the initial investment. But if we were to cycle through six such consecutive short-term winners they’d average out to a gain of just 20%. On that basis, the stocks we recommended during any part of 2016, whether for four months or for four weeks, averaged a gain of 12.9%.

The average holding period for our recommendations, including all the buys and sells during the course of the year, was 233 days in 2016, the equivalent of a portfolio held from Jan. 1 to Aug. 21. Adjusting our average 2016 return to offset the shorter holding period yields an annual gain of just over 20%. That’s probably the fairest number for comparison to the index benchmarks, and we’re happy with it given our dramatic overweighting of  the safer, tax-advantaged pipeline plays relative to the XLE.

I’ve summarized these performance stats in the table below:

We published the only comprehensive Best Buys list for 2016 on Jan. 21, and stocks from that list that remained Best Buys for the remainder of the year averaged a return of 27% for all of 2016. That top 10 included two stocks that would net us nearly 50% for the year, but it also a shipper that would be down 30% within a week.

The Best Buys from that list that didn’t stay that way averaged a year-to-date loss of 0.5% before their demotion.

And the two additional Best Buys designated later in the year went on to subsequently return 51% and 19%.

On average, our Best Buys returned 17%, including the 7 of 12 added or subtracted after January.

Now let’s look at the performance for each of the portfolios, which as a reminder group recommendations by level of risk. All the returns shown below include dividends and are from the start of the year or original recommendation date for 2016 additions, through the end of the year or drop date for the subtractions. As always, the numbers for stocks in which we recommended partial profit-taking average the return on the retained half of the position with that for the liquidated half as of the sale date.     

The Conservative Portfolio leaned heavily on midstream MLPs, a sector that underperformed the broader gains in energy last year. Despite this, it averaged a sparkling return of 24.7%.

Spectra Energy (NYSE: SE) led the way with a merger-aided gain of nearly 80%, while AmeriGas Partners (NYSE: APU) chipped in 50%. The latter was the only MLP among the basket’s seven biggest winners.

The other key was not recommending many losers. Of the 19 Conservative selections only Delek Logistics (NYSE: DKL) failed to deliver a positive return.

The Growth Portfolio was led by rebounding midstream gas processor and crude storage play SemGroup (NYSE: SEMG), alongside top Best Buy Energy Transfer Equity and yet another midstream general partner in NuStar GP Holdings (NYSE: NSH).   

And while only 4 of our 25 growth picks failed to make money, those setbacks were big enough to really hurt, especially in the case of renewable energy burnouts First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR) and SolarEdge Technologies (NASDAQ: SEDG).

The Aggressive Portfolio is where most of the bodies are buried, with big early-year losses on those hastily discarded shale drillers, tanker operators as well as the redeemed leveraged MLPL ETF and bankrupt solar developer SunEdison.

It also saw the most churn and therefore the shortest average holding period, another factor reflected in the subpar performance.

But this is also a basket that was down more than 8% at mid-year and saw the biggest second-half turnaround thanks to bets on the Alliance mining complex, the well-timed addition of orphaned SunEdison yieldco TerraForm Power (NASDAQ: TERP) and the equally fortuitous decision just before the OPEC quota cut to add three shale stocks, including two dropped 10 months earlier.

The strong second-half momentum across all our portfolios has carried over into the early days of 2017. We remain focused on maximizing subscribers’ long-term risk-adjusted returns despite the recent run of luck with short-term speculations.