How bullish are we feeling? If the American Association of Individual Investors’ weekly survey is anything to go by, not very. It has been carried out for decades and is much followed as a measure of sentiment. Retail investors are simply asked if they’re feeling bullish, bearish, or neither.

As quarters go, this was one for the record books. Taking three months, or a calendar year, to have any particular significance makes no sense, but it’s difficult to quell it. So, here is an attempt to summarize what’s changed in the last three months from the point of view of markets.

As of the end of last week, markets were in an emphatic “risk-on” phase. After the initial shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the S&P 500 had regained a stunning 6.6% in two days’ trading. I argued that the market was working on the assumption that Vladimir Putin would get what he wanted, and that the world could live with this.

Rather than attempt to follow every twist and turn of the geopolitical drama, or all the excitement in Washington, it might be best to focus on the most vital commodity market — liquidity.

If 2020 was the year we all learned about epidemiology, 2021 has taught us more than we ever wanted to know about inflation. Price rises had remained calm and controlled for four decades, ever since the U.S. Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker hiked interest rates aggressively in the early 1980s.

On Nov. 17, I led a TOPLive discussion with Benjamin Ho, Vassar College professor and author of “Why Trust Matters: An Economist’s Guide to the Ties That Bind Us,” which explores how relationships, expectations and human interaction shape the world around us — be it in trade, employment or democracy.

Investors are witnessing the “biggest U.S. fantasy trip of all time” in the stock market thanks to a clueless Federal Reserve, speedy stimulus and surprising success with Covid-19 vaccinations, according to Jeremy Grantham, financial historian and co-founder of the investment firm GMO.