The U.S. stock market took investors for a wild ride in 2015, but in the end it was a trip to nowhere.

Despite veering between record highs and the steepest dive in four years, the stock market ended the year essentially flat, delivering the weakest performance since 2008. That means if you invested in a fund that tracks the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, you have little to show for the past 12 months.

“It’s been mildly disappointing,” said Michael Baele, managing director at the Private Client Reserve at U.S. Bank. “Any time that you come in toward the end of the year close to flat you always want a little bit more.”

Markets overseas had their own challenges.

China’s market surged in the late spring and then fell sharply in the summer despite several efforts by China’s government to stem the decline. The Shanghai Composite Index ended the year up 9.4 percent. Japan’s market finished flat after that country’s government stepped up its economic stimulus program. In Europe, Britain’s market ended the year down about 5 percent, while indexes in Germany and France turned in healthy gains of 9.6 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively.

In the U.S., the market got 2015 off to a slow start as investors worried about falling crude oil prices, flat earnings growth and when and how quickly the Federal Reserve would begin raising interest rates.

By May, the major indexes were hitting new highs. Even the Nasdaq bested its dot-com high-water mark set in March 2000.

The market didn’t stay in milestone territory for long, though.

Worries about slowing growth in China and elsewhere gave reason for the Fed to pause and for investors to fret, even as the U.S. economy continued to create jobs and consumer confidence improved. Weak company earnings, largely due to the strong dollar and falling oil prices, didn’t do much for the market’s confidence.

By August, the anxiety had deepened and the market dropped sharply. The three major U.S. indexes went into a correction, commonly defined as a loss of at least 10 percent from a recent peak, for the first time in four years.

That slide didn’t last long, either.

Within several weeks, the market had mostly bounced back. The Nasdaq composite returned to positive territory for the year, while the Dow average and S&P 500 remained slightly in the red until December.

In the weeks that followed, the S&P 500 inched back into positive territory, leaving the Dow as the only major market indicator negative for the year.

That held true until the last day of the year, when the S&P 500 index slipped back into the red.

The Dow ended down 178.84 points, or 1 percent, to 17,425.03 on Thursday. The S&P 500 index lost 19.42 points, or 0.9 percent, to 2,043.94. The Nasdaq composite fell 58.43 points, or 1.2 percent, to 5,007.41.

The S&P 500 ended the year with a slight loss of 0.7 percent. Once dividends are included, it had a total return of 1.4 percent. That’s its worst showing since 2008, when it slumped 37 percent in the midst of the financial crisis. That figure also includes dividends.

“There was a lot of news that kept hitting the market and the market kept shrugging it all off and hung in there,” said J.J. Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade. “I’d say, given all that the market faced this year, it was pretty strong.”

These were some of the key factors driving U.S. markets in 2015:

Waiting for the Fed

Wall Street watched few things more closely this year than the Federal Reserve. Traders had been predicting early on that the central bank would begin raising its benchmark interest rate as early as March. When that didn’t happen, investors turned their focus to June, only to be disappointed again.

Eventually, in December, the Fed took action. It nudged its benchmark overnight borrowing rate higher, its first increase in interest rates in nearly a decade.

The Fed made it clear that it was expressing a vote of confidence in the U.S. economy by doing so and that future increases would be gradual. That helped reassure investors that the Fed wouldn’t raise rates too quickly and thereby stunt the economy’s growth.

“It really was central banks looming large over the market,” Baele said. “The market had a fair amount of fear that the Fed raising rates was a risk to the market. It’s turned around now.”