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The first half of 2009 has been a whirlwind of events: Unprecedented government efforts to rescue a financial system on the brink, skyrocketing unemployment, dismal corporate earnings and a housing market plagued by defaults and foreclosures. Oh, and then there was that whole $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

Yet, even as all those detrimental factors played out, in March, the market quietly started staging a comeback. According to Lipper, the average S&P 500 index fund gained 15.7% during the second quarter and has now increased 3% year to date. Meanwhile, the average domestic equity fund has climbed 6.5% over the last six months and the average world equity fund has jumped 14.7%. That still doesn’t make up for a dismal 2008, but the performance does seem to indicate that investors are putting some of the bad news in the rearview mirror and are once again comfortable investing in stocks.

“It was a wild six months to try to lump together,” says Stacey Schreft, director of investment strategy at The Mutual Fund Store, headquartered in Overland Park, Kan. “As dramatic as things fell they turned around.”

Adds Ron Rowland, president of Capital Cities Asset Management in Austin, Texas: “Year to date, it looks like nothing ever happened.”

This week, the SmartMoney.com fund screen takes a break from its normal routine to focus on overall fund performance during the first half of 2009. Instead of looking at individual funds with good track records in their respective categories and low fees, we simply list the six-month performance of 24 key fund groups tracked by Lipper. Consider it a first-half report card for your portfolio. We do this screen for an important reason: By staying aware of fund returns, investors can hopefully spot burgeoning trends.

Indeed, one of the emerging themes of the first half of 2009 was the thumping growth funds gave their value counterparts. As you can see from the table below, growth funds easily outpaced value funds up and down the market capitalization spectrum. That trend had been playing out before the market took a nosedive last year — at that point, value briefly trumped growth — but now the gap is widening and many market experts think it will continue to do so since growth stocks historically tend to lead the market out of its doldrums.

“I have been in favor of growth since the middle of ‘07” says Rowland, who hung onto his growth fund holdings even as investors fled to safety.

Now, there were some fund categories that didn’t do all that well. Financial services funds gained 27.4% during the second quarter after most big banks passed the government’s “stress tests” and were able to raise capital to repay federal loans. However, the category is still down 3.4% in 2009. Real estate funds dropped 9.5% the last six months and equity income offerings, the funds that focus on dividend-paying stocks, managed to eke out a mere 1.2% gain.

But at the same time there were also some eye-popping returns. Technology funds soared 24.6% thanks to some M&A deals and opportunistic buying after tech stocks got hammered in 2008. Investors also became more willing to take on risk after fleeing to safe havens last year. The average emerging markets fund gained 34.2%. Latin America offerings, a subset of emerging markets, increased 44.5%. That was the single biggest increase in the first half of any of the 68 equity categories tracked by Lipper.

Investors shouldn’t get overly excited about those rosy returns. “We clearly see people chasing returns,” says Schreft. And many market watchers think another event — rising unemployment, a failed bank, inflation — could cause the rally to quickly cool off. “I think it’s probably safe to say the complete meltdown and disruption of big financial institutions that was scaring everybody months ago is not going to happen,” says Rowland. “The worst case scenario is now off the table. However, the next worst case is still a possibility.”

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