2010 was another tough year for any Short ETF but it was especially tough for the leveraged Short ETFs. UltraShort Silver was the worst performer as silver soared on strong investor demand and QE2.

Here are just a few examples of YTD performance as of 12/21/2010:

ZSL – Ultrashort Silver was down over 74%
DRV – Direxion Daily Real Estate Bear 3X was down over 67%
VXX – iPath S&P 500 VIX S-T Futures ETN was down almost 64%
TZA – Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X was down almost 60%
CZI – Direxion Daily China Bear 3X was down over 55%

The only long ETFs that were in the 20 worst performers were Natural Gas ETFs UNG and GAZ both down around 43% as well as PowerShares Global Wind Energy – PWND which was down nearly 41%.

After two years of a near free fall the Short ETFs are now attracting the attention of contrarian investors, only time will tell if 2011 will treat them any better than 2009 & 2010.

All information was taken from the Yahoo Finance ETF Screener.