Twenty sixteen was no one’s idea of fun. It greeted energy investors with a crash and ended with angry pipeline protests and angrier national politics. Although midstream MLPs eventually rebounded from winter losses alongside oil and natural gas prices, the gains never seemed very secure as the partnerships scrambled to raise capital while coping with diminished profits.

Against that challenging backdrop, we did pretty great thanks to a fantastic second half. Investments recommended by MLP Profits all year long returned 31% in 2016, and those in the portfolios for any part of the year averaged a gain of 19.9%.

Neither of these numbers is directly comparable to the 18.3% total return for the Alerian MLP Index in 2016, for reasons I’ll get to in a bit. But they do point to significant outperformance.

We trailed the Alerian on the same not really comparable basis at mid-year with an average gain of 8.4% vs. 14.7% for the index.  Then came a huge second half courtesy of a whole host of recommendations, from niche picks like Alliance Resource Partners (NASDAQ: ARLP) and Cedar Fair (NYSE: FUN) to, most gratifyingly, our top three Best Buys: Energy Transfer Equity (NYSE: ETE), Antero Midstream Partners (NYSE: AM) and CONE Midstream Partners (NYSE: CNNX).

It helped that the MLPs more sensitive to energy prices like Archrock Partners (NYSE: APLP) and DCP Midstream (NYSE: DPM) finally got going. We also got good mileage out of recent portfolio additions like Macquarie Infrastructure (NYSE: MIC), Enbridge Energy Management (NYSE: EEQ), Williams Partners (NYSE: WPZ) and Tesoro Logistics (NYSE: TLLP). And there were no major losers in the second half to match the drag from tanker operators and SunEdison in the early part of 2016.

Measuring the relative and general utility of that advice is luckily a problem I only face twice a year.  Using the average return only for picks in the portfolios all year long neglects the often major impact of the buy and sell recommendations made during the year.

Yet including them makes for a poor comparison to a portfolio or an index. If your portfolio or an index included Boardwalk Pipeline Partners (NYSE: BWP) from the beginning of the year until June 20, when we recommended selling it, and then replaced it with Alliance Holdings (NASDAQ: AHGP), which we recommended buying on that date, the cumulative compounded return would be just over 100%. But when we average them out we get a shade under 42%, even though those two recommendations never overlapped. The distortion only gets worse when we include the many recommendations made late in the year or sold early.

We can address both issues by taking the average return for all positions recommended during any portion of 2016 and then adjusting that return for the average duration of those recommendations, as shown below. Note that last year’s buys and sells were recommended as investments for less than five months on average, reducing the average holding period of the entire portfolio to less than nine months.

The time-adjusted return of 27.6% is the best comparison with Alerian’s 18.3, and the most accurate gauge of our performance.

Of course, that leaves the issue of Best Buys. There’s really no point in trying to quantify how much more important getting the #1 Best Buy right is then the #10 Best Buy or any other recommendation. But it obviously matters, so I’m laying out the Best Buy performance numbers below.

For Best Buys on the original 2016 on Jan. 19, I’m using performance data from Jan. 1 so as not to omit the early-year carnage from the calculations. All other returns are from first appearance on the Best Buy list, and all returns are through removal from the Best Buy list or the end of the year.

The table doesn’t include a couple of 2015 carryovers dropped from the Jan. 19 list, nor the addition made in late December.

Given an average term of approximately six months for these Best Buys, their average performance was broadly in line to maybe  a shade better than for all our picks, on average. We did do better than well with top selection ETE, as well as with the springtime additions to the list and with the #2 and #3 Best Buys as of late August.

Moving on to a full accounting of the results by portfolio, the Conservative basket, our most exclusive grouping of the least risky equities, generally underperformed after holding up much better than most the previous year.

And that’s despite a big boost from UGI, the propane merchant and natural gas distributor moved here a year ago. EQM and SEP drifted as buyers focused on the higher and more dislocated yields with the more immediate upside. That was also the story with EPD and MMP for much of last year, though the very recent strength shown by these giants is a bullish omen.

All the returns on the table above and those 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.

In addition to the picks already mentioned, the Growth Portfolio’s strong results received a lift from the comebacks by such midstream giants as Kinder Morgan, Plains All America and TransCanada. The latter also helped out by buying Columbia. Targa Resources Partners, on the other hand, got bought by its sponsor near the depths of the slump, locking in its hefty loss for us early in the year.

The Aggressive Portfolio had even more dramatic disasters. By midyear it had already locked in losses of at least 25% on no fewer than seven discarded recommendations, four of them tanker operators. That left us with an uphill slog to improve on its first-half average return of just 0.8%.

But that was before the Alliance picks made in late June got rolling, alongside Best Buys TerraForm Power and Enviva. Once buyers began scooping up the riskier midstream plays leveraged to a recovery in oil and gas prices, things changed even more.

I’m expecting a good 2017 for the midstream energy sector and our picks, but not one this great again. So it’s a good thing that, in addition to the picks, this newsletter supplies original research and analysis that you have hopefully found helpful, from earnings reviews that don’t parrot the press releases to our consistent calls not to panic sell at last winter’s lows. You’ll get that no matter what the market throws our way. Whatever is, after the last few years we’ll be ready.