It's already been a bumpy ride so far in 2015 and with so many retirement savers and investors with fresh capital to put to work, making the right decisions now will have a profound impact on your total return come year-end.

A new year brings about fresh contributions, and at our firm we have just gone through another wave of rebalancing, as investors make their IRA contributions or toggle their funds with required minimum distributions to taxable accounts for reinvestment.

Depending on your personal investment plan, the easy answer is to gingerly spread that capital out among your existing holdings so that you don't become overweight any particular position or alter your asset allocation. However, we have found that this type of traditional approach in some cases racks up unneeded transaction costs, and in turn doesn't allow your portfolio to adapt to changing market environments. So instead, it can behoove you to examine the market for relative value, and select sectors or asset classes that present the best entry point and potential for high returns.

The difficult part is uncovering the areas that align with your goals and objectives, while also falling into your general comfort zone. With stocks on their highs, and interest rates on their lows, nothing looks that appealing at first glance. Yet peeling back the surface, it's easy to see that certain areas of both the equity and fixed-income market are good relative buys for intermediate and long-term investors.

Beginning with fixed-income, high quality Treasury, agency, and corporate bonds are nearing levels not seen since before the 2013 rise in interest rates. So unless you want to relive the events that transpired in the latter half of that year, my advice is to keep your duration low. The other side of the coin looks much more attractive to add to, since credit-sensitive high-yield bonds have underperformed the latter part of 2014 and even into early 2015. Spreads have nearly doubled since their 2014 low, and offer much more relative attractiveness than they did last year at this time.

This is in large part comes as a result of the massive dive in oil prices, as the high-yield bond market is made up of roughly 15%-20% oil-related issues. Right now could be an excellent low-duration area that offers attractive total return prospects if oil prices stabilize and the economy remains on track during 2015. The general rule of thumb that I recommend is seeking out areas where the duration is roughly half the distribution yield. That way the fund pays enough cash flow to overcome any impending interest rate fluctuations. A fund that more conservative retirement investors could consider is the PIMCO 0-5yr High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYS), +0.19%

Observing the equity landscape, it's obvious that interest rate sensitive sectors such as utilities, consumer staples, and real-estate stocks are a touch over valued on a relative basis. Furthermore, they will likely exhibit higher volatility if interest rates begin to tick up sometime in the middle or latter parts of 2015.

Conversely, large energy-related stocks have massively underperformed given the price action in crude oil and are trading at attractive comparative valuation levels. Another sector that looks interesting is financial stocks, which could benefit from the interest rate environment in 2015. A few of my favorite index-based examples include the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF), +1.21%  and iShares Energy Producers ETF (FILL), +3.37%

Complementing your existing core holdings by making strategic additions to your portfolio may not be for everyone. However, for more active investors, it could yield excellent benefits and significantly increase your chances of superior performance. The key to success will be in developing a plan to make additional allocation changes as market dynamics evolve, since time seemingly heals all wounds in various asset classes.