EVERY YEAR AROUND

this time, financial publishers like to roll out their top investment picks for the upcoming 12 months. But as I've preached from the

, it's trading technique and not simply whether to buy, sell or hold a particular security that ultimately determines success in your bottom line.

And a big part of proper technique is product selection. After all, your returns can only be as smart as the products you use to achieve them. Even home-improvement guru Bob Vila would admit that it's not the biggest hammer you want, but the one that is most appropriate for the job.

Call it freakish, but I'm much more likely to be interested in a new mutual fund than in a first-run film. So in lieu of just posting my buy list, I thought I'd highlight a few of the unique investment vehicles that caught my eye in 2002 and, in my opinion, deserve a closer look in the year to come.

As we wrote last year, for most small investors no-load mutual funds are still the best value. The combination of professional management, low transaction costs and modest minimum investments is a compelling value for investors without the means to buy individual stocks or work with a full-time money manager.

And while Pimco's Bill Gross and Fidelity's Robert Stansky get all the press, it's the smaller fund companies that are, in my opinion, offering the most exciting options these days. Among my favorite offbeat choices is the Permanent Portfolio, a tiny $31 million fund that arguably should be named fund of the year.

Few times does a fund actually live up to the hype of its marketing materials. And while its portfolio of gold and Swiss bonds would've seemed bizarre back when aggressive growth reigned supreme, the fund's charmingly 1970's approach has thrived in an environment of higher commodity prices and a weaker dollar. Like the hard-currency fund and hard-asset fund both of which we discussed a while back Permanent Portfolio is a fund that is in many ways ahead of its time. It's up more than 10% so far in 2002.

I'm always impressed with funds that offer access to a unique asset class, which is why my highly deserving runner-up for fund of the year is the Alpine International Real Estate Equity fund. Although international real estate chalked up double-digit returns in the first quarter, the fund is still one of literally only a handful of ways to get exposure to this timely and under-owned asset class. From my research, it seems most of the international real-estate funds are aimed only at institutional investors (the Morgan Stanley Euro Real Estate fund, for one, comes to mind). Alpine International sports a minimum investment of $1,000 and has returned more than 5% year-to-date.

Although international REITs in general have cooled after a red-hot first half, I still believe it's an asset class in which there's immediate value. Not only will these funds directly benefit from a weaker U.S. dollar, but lower mortgage rates will help as well. More than anything you're getting access to the asset class many of the sector's most important names, such as Kiwi Properties Trust, aren't even listed in the U.S.

In the ever-expanding world of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), 2002 will go down as the year of the "big bang" an important yet under-appreciated transformation that occurred with the listing of the first fixed-income ETFs. We first covered these new products just after their launch last summer and remain enthusiastic converts.

As we wrote in August, the funds represent a major new opportunity for non-institutional investors to actually participate in the trading of interest rates both long and short. With the exception of highly leveraged bond futures contracts and a few cumbersome open-ended funds, there aren't too many ways I can think of for Joe Sixpack to quickly and effectively make a bet on rates. And whether you're bullish or bearish on the future direction of bond prices, funds like iShares Trust Lehman 20+ Year offer every investor the ability to go long and short specific points on the yield curve without a futures account. Trust me, this is huge! Other companies seem to think so too. Recently, an outfit named ETFadvisors launched its own series of fixed-income ETFs called "FITRS."

My runner-up for most notable ETF goes to Bank of New York's recently launched family of BLDRS (Baskets of Listed Depositary Receipts). More than just another clever acronym, these ETFs hold diversified positions in many of the non-U.S. stocks listed on American exchanges. Considering the performance of some of the emerging markets over the past few months, it might be worthwhile to assume the next big bull market won't be in still over-owned U.S. stocks.

We've been talking about closed-end funds for years and among the old favorites that stuck out this year was ASA a closed-end gold fund that has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since the early 1970s. Despite a 90% run-up so far this year, the fund still trades at a slight discount to net-asset value and at a fraction of its high in the early 1980s. And although I'd rather own the metal than the gold stocks, I can't see paying the double-digit premium now placed on the Central Fund of Canada, an innovative but overpriced closed-end fund that holds physical gold and silver bullion.

In the futures world, I was impressed this year with the revitalization of the Dow Jones Futures traded at the Chicago Board of Trade. This previously moribund contract has been given a new life thanks to a smart marketing push and streamlined contract size. Traded nearly 24 hours a day, this increasingly liquid contract is giving the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's S&P 500 E-Mini a run for its money.

Jonathan Hoenig is portfolio manager at Capitalistpig Asset Management, a Chicago-based hedge fund. At the time of writing, Hoenig's fund held positions in many of the securities mentioned in this article.