The Roman god Janus looks both ahead and behind at the same time. With his namesake month January days away, now’s a good time to look at a few things income investors learned in 2009, and what they portend for the year ahead.

Without a doubt, the best news about 2009 was that income investments of all stripes prospered. Canadian trusts, master limited partnerships (MLP), utility stocks, telecoms, small banks, Super Oils and even real estate investment trusts (REIT) were well in the black. The magnitude of the gains is even more astounding considering the markets continued to fall during the first two months of the year before bottoming in March.