Bond ETFs posted a good start to 2014, though March showed its lion's side

Sparking rate concerns: Janet Yellen

The first quarter of 2014 saw equities change course from the torrid returns they posted last year, and rising interest rates in 2013 gave way to falling yields for 2014 — so far. Starting the new year, market observers generally expected a correction to equity prices at some point, although unsettling headlines from key emerging markets such as China and Brazil and disappointing economic activity at home accelerated the softening.

Unusually cold weather was widely blamed for lax economic data for January and February, but late in the quarter we heard that the fourth-quarter 2013 real gross domestic product growth was revised higher — from 2.4% to 2.6%, which lifted equities and weighed on many bond types. But the bond markets had a particularly bad scare in mid-March when new Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen, in an attempt to sound soothing and familiar to journalists, instead sparked concerns that the Fed would begin raising rates much sooner than expected. Many bond exchange-traded