So that was the 2011 stock market, a nerve-rending trip to nowhere.

Defying both statistical probabilities and the amplitude of the emotional swings the tape induced, the Standard & Poor’s 500 finished the year within a whisper of its start point, closing Friday at 1257.60, versus 1257.64 a year ago. To emphasize the point-to-point stasis of U.S. equities, the equal-weighted version of the S&P 500, best tracked via the Rydex S&P 500 Equal-Weight exchange-traded fund (ticker: RSP), closed 2010 at 46.59; it finished Friday at 46.29.

In standing still, the market spent the year doing the financial equivalent of a driver “feathering the clutch” in a car sitting midway up a steep incline: The direction of nature’s pull was lower, but just enough force on the gas pedal now and then, with the exact right simultaneous pressure on the clutch, halted the backsliding and kept things steady, if precariously so.

The force of gravity, in this instance, was the macro/Euro/credit drama, constantly keeping investors on alert for some force majeure declaration that the financial system itself—banks, currencies, international trade arrangements—was again in peril. The fuel opposing it was corporate business conditions, with rising profits and plenty of cash on companies’ books.

Part, but not nearly all, of last year’s erratic daily pattern can be explained by the flight of patient capital from equities, leaving the field to the short-term scalpers and incentive-fee mercenaries who must trade to survive. According to fund-flow research firm EPFR Global, a net $75 billion departed U.S.-focused stock funds, a majority of the $123 billion that left developed-market funds. Another $47 billion on a net basis flowed out of emerging-market equity funds.

This is probably bullish for future multi-year equity returns, but says nothing about the next several months or even all of 2012. Just because an asset class has been orphaned doesn’t mean it’s about to be adopted by some other benevolent souls.

THE S&P 500 HAS RARELY FINISHED a calendar year very close to where it began. John Harris, a market historian and author, notes that since 1928, the S&P 500’s total return in a given year has been between minus 5% and plus 5% only nine prior times, first in 1934 and most recently in 2005. He worked up some numbers about the performance of each subsequent year. The net result is a positive tendency, but sometimes with some nastiness in between.

The average S&P 500 return in years following those nine previous flattish years was 26.3%. Yet three of those years—1935, 1940 and 1982—held either a bear market or severe correction in store before things improved, with losses ranging from 15.2% to 28% at the year’s low.

This nicely captures the present, with a pat bullish case based on a firming domestic economy, strong (for now) corporate fundamentals and aggressive money-printing countered by an uncomfortably high chance of credit meltdown and no clear path out of a developed world swimming in debt.

Brokerage-firm strategists are again putting out targets for an 8% one-year market gain, to 1360 on the S&P 500, basically last year’s high. They practice the “art of the plausible,” and such a target is that, assuming profits continue to grind higher and Europe declines its many invitations to implode.

The central-bank financing scheme put in place weeks ago in Europe was widely panned but truly could buy the banks and governments quite a bit of time, or at least stave off the sort of disorderly liquidation attack that investors are fearing. We need to see the markets operate free of the year-end pressures to shrink balance sheets, sell assets and trim risk to determine whether this is a valid working assumption. The U.S. housing market likely has bottomed and we could be one announcement away from a blowout jobs report.

Yet, there’s a nagging, if rarely addressed concern: time. A year ago, there were signs (not embraced by many, but detailed in Barron’s) that we could be in for a rerun of the 2005 market, in which prior bull-market gains were digested in range-y trading, with price/earnings multiples declining.

This happened in 2011. But the next act of this bullish production, following the example of 2006, would involve the “financial engineering” stage of a bull market, with buyouts and a leverage binge taking over from rebounding corporate profits. If the Euro-fix is seen to be in, risk appetites would surge and volatility would drop to accommodate such a scenario, but that’s an “if” too big for most to bet on. The clock is also ticking on corporate profit margins, now at a record high. The market rarely puts a fatter multiple on very high margins (Source: Barrons Online).