NEW YORK – If you'd told investors what was going to happen in 2012 — U.S. economic growth at stall speed, an intensifying European debt crisis, a slowdown in China, fiscal deadlock in Washington, decelerating corporate earnings growth — and asked how the stock market would perform, few would have predicted a good year.

But that's just what they got.

The Dow Jones industrial average, the Standard & Poor's 500 and the Nasdaq composite index will all end the year substantially higher, despite losing ground in the final days of year as concerns about the looming "fiscal cliff" mounted.