How the markets and the economy surprised investors and economists in 2023, by the numbers

NEW YORK (AP) — In a year full of big numbers, with strong gains for stocks and even more fantastic flights for crypto, it was one shrinking number that superseded all.

Inflation, the scourge of the global economy, moderated this year. It’s still relatively high, particularly after the many years of low inflation that everyone enjoyed before U.S. inflation topped 9% two summers ago. But it’s cooled enough to get investors looking ahead to a 2024 where interest rates may be on the way down instead of up. Globally, inflation is estimated to have come down to 6.9% from 8.7% last year.

Surprisingly, the U.S. economy also held up through the year despite worries at the start of it that a recession may be inevitable. For a while, the worry was even that the economy may be too strong, which could have fed into upward pressure on inflation and forced the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates higher for longer.

That led to counterintuitive moments where Wall Street actually cheered weaker reports on the economy, as long as they weren’t too weak, because they kept alive the possibility of a perfect landing for the economy engineered by the Federal Reserve. The goal was for the economy to slow just enough to snuff out high inflation, but not so much that it falls into a recession.

Now, with the economy still growing and expectations rising for cuts to rates coming in 2024, investors have rushed to get ahead of the moves, which can act like steroids for all kinds of markets. U.S. stocks bounced back from their dismal 2022, which was Wall Street’s worst year since the dot-com bubble was deflating two decades earlier.

Much of Wall Street’s run was due to just a small group of stocks, but breadth was better around the world. Stock markets across the Americas, Europe and Asia all...