For more than four years the Federal Reserve has been inventing new ways to print money at an unprecedented pace. Throughout this grand experiment in stimulus, the inflation hawks have blown out their voices and ruined their keyboards howling about the inflation risk and looking for the same.

You can split hairs all you want on how inflation is measured, but the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has shown little to no increase in years. The core CPI measure excludes food and energy, so let's do that for the last 12 months. Prices at the pump are the same as they were last year. Electricity is effectively unchanged, natural gas is slightly cheaper. Orange Juice has gotten cheaper, milk and bread are unchanged. The price of ground chuck is the outlier, rising 8% over the last 12 months.

If prices feel like they're going up, it's probably because wages have been so weak. Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management says the punk gain in wages is the new normal for this stage of the economic cycle. "This is the fourth recovery in a row now where wage inflation has continued to decline well into a recovery," Paulsen says in the attached video.

The lack of price inflation has given the FOMC a free hand to pump in stimulus. "Wage inflation declines have been the Fed's best friend," he says.

While fund flow numbers have been weak for the mutual fund industry this year, investors have poured money into exchange traded funds (ETFs), and are now positioning optimally for 2013.

According to ETFtrends.com, ETF assets are up 26% or $273 billion so far this year. This easily surpasses the $119 billion total seen in 2011 and is on track match the record set in 2008, according to Morningstar.

Despite more dollars in the space, there was a burst of smaller providers who "realized they can't keep products out there," says Todd Rosenbluth, developer of S&P Capital IQ ETF research and ranking methodology, which ranks 750 ETFs.

While there were 170 new ETFs and ETNs this year, there were 98 that closed as of December. In fact, so many failed that some dubbed it "The Year of the ETF Closure."

"There's been talk about closing ETFs, and that happens because some ideas don't stick," says Tom Lydon editor of ETFtrends.com, in the attached video. "But we continue to see net positive new ETFs in the marketplace."

Flows in 2012 were dominated by taxable bond ETFs, which have attracted a record $48 billion in inflows year-to-date, according to Morningstar. PIMCO Total Return ETF (BOND), the largest actively managed ETF and the most popular newcomer of 2012, has gained 10% since launching in February. With nearly $4 billion in assets already, Lydon predicts BOND will be dubbed "ETF launch of the year."

Heavy inflows to fixed income are likely to be a continuing trend in 2013 as investors hunt for yield with low cost structures, says S&P Capital IQ's Rosenbluth. Which corners do well will ultimately come down to risk tolerance -- whether money continues to flow heavily into high yield, for instance, depends naturally on the state of the economy. Investment grade bond ETFs -- which have a higher yield than Treasuries, but not that much more credit risk -- are likely to gain attention and are positioned to do well, he says.

What else is there to think about in 2013? Here are three more considerations: