Many people are busy figuring out this question. Be it fund managers, CEOs or CFOs. These people are required to update their investors, who would like to take stock of the performance of their representatives/agents in the year going by. Let us start our assessment with broad economic indicators and then moving ahead with performance of investments.

1. GDP - Though the aftermath of the global financial crisis were very much apparent from the GDP numbers in the Q1FY2009. But in Q12009, India's GDP grew at 6.1%. And with the robust domestic demand, government stimulus packages and persistent foreign investment, India saw its GDP rising at 7.9% in Q32009. This was a very impressive number as the expectations of the market were close to 6.5%. Financing, agriculture and real estate growth stood at 7.7% in Q2, while manufacturing sector grew by 9.2%.

2. Inflation - The WPI based inflation softened during 2009 to below zero level. However, prices of items of mass consumption (primarily food articles) broke all the manageable levels of government and RBI and rose substantially due to supply side constraints.

3. Industrial Production and Corporate Earnings - This is best depicted by Index of Industrial Production (IIP). Till May 2009, one could not see the IIP numbers rising above 5% which is way below the numbers of 2008. However, with constant government support, foreign investments and strengthening of domestic credit markets, IIP index started increasing at more than 9% since August.

4. World Economies - Unlike on the domestic front, that has seen a sharper recovery from the slowdown, the global economic conditions seemed struggling. Most Central Banks in the developed economies reduced lending rates below 1%. What one could be happy about was recovery in the commodity prices and a reasonable recovery in equity markets However, unemployment remained a pertinent issue.

So let's begin with our assessment of performance of investment market in 2009.

1. Market Indices - The first thing that an investor looks at while measuring the performance of its shares or mutual funds is comparing it with the Sensex or Nifty. This is so because everyone wants to know whether the performance was good or bad vis-a-vis a benchmark.

2. Gold - Gold has been one of the favourite investments for Indians since ages. But the form of investment in gold has drastically changed. Gold coins and Gold Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) are the new ways to put money in gold. Gold was the one trusted investment that fully served his master.

3. Rupee - This year we saw introduction of currency futures i.e. contracts for buying and selling foreign currencies against INR. Currencies are thought to be one of the most liquid market due to presence of countless players and 24x7 market structure. Even if NSE and BSE close, an investor sitting in US can trade INR at that time in the international derivative markets. INR depreciated till March 2009.