The Punchline's Abe Gulkowitz is the author of our favorite chart-only newsletter, and as 2015 draws to a close, it is obvious that he has been very busy.
Here are his parting thoughts for a year that had a lot of volatility and day-to-day excitement, which saw bear markets strike a countless S&P500 stocks, which saw the geopolitical situation careen right into another global proxy war, a year in which Greece almost again Grexited the Eurozone, in which EMs tantrumed violently ahead of the Fed's rate hike, in which the Swiss revalued and China devalued their currencies, a year which saw junk bonds and commodities plunge to unprecedented levels... and yet where the S&P500 is set to close literally where it started.
What a way to end 2015. The Federal Reserve voted Wednesday to raise interest rates and begin pulling back its unprecedented support for the American economy and financial markets. The shift, ending an era of easy money that helped save the nation from another Great Depression, had been slow in coming , and the years of easing had created its own distortions and dependencies. The Fed also pledged to wean the nation off its stimulus slowly, an acknowledgement that further progress is not guaranteed and that the central bank is operating in uncharted territory. In addition, the shift amounts to a vote of confidence that the American economy finally stands somewhat more resilient. - - perhaps uniquely in the world.
Yet we cannot ignore the reality of a poor global growth trajectory, dogged by crashing commodity prices, a slowdown in China and new traumas in the speculative high-yield and emerging markets. Indeed, even the U.S. economy has yet to produce a full-throttled expansion. We will continue to highlight the nuances, peculiarities of the regional and sectoral differences in business recovery and worlds of finance. Fasten your seatbelts for 2016.
And with that said, here is the year that was in charts.