The S&P 500 notched a fantastic year in 2024, closing up 25% on a total return basis (with dividends reinvested).

Why it matters: Over longer time horizons, the performance looks even better. It's the best two-year return since the late '90s, and the best 20-year return since 2008.

• As good as that is, returns are still well below where they've been at many points in the past.

The big picture: For most investors, what really matters isn't what happens to the stock market from day to day or even from year to year, but rather how their money grows over the long term.

• By that metric, stock returns have been excellent. The total return to the S&P 500 over the past decade is 242%, which means that $1,000 invested at the beginning of 2015 would be worth $3,425 today.
• Over 20 years the return is a whopping 618% — $1,000 invested in 2005 would have turned into $7,175.

Zoom out: While such gains are impressive, they're far from unprecedented.

• 20-year returns peaked at more than 2,500% in 2000, while 10-year returns were more than 400% in March 2019.
• While 10-year returns are sometimes negative, as in March 2009, 20-year returns have been persistently positive.

The other side: America is exceptional, in large part because of the performance of a handful of huge tech companies. Stock markets in other countries, lacking megacap outperformers, have been underwhelming in comparison.

• The MSCI ACWI ex USA index, which tracks the performance of non-U.S. markets, is up a mediocre 6.1% over one year, 25% over five years, and 68% over 10 years.

Our thought bubble: It's natural to assume that what goes up must go down, and that bull markets are inevitably followed by bear markets. But in reality, anybody betting that stocks would converge back to their long-term average valuations has lost a lot of money in recent years.

• That said, stock strategists at Goldman Sachs, for one, think the good times are largely over.

The bottom line: While the stock market's long-term performance has been strong, it hasn't been wildly exceptional. Valuations may be high, but what goes up often goes up further.

The incoming administration promises a lighter regulatory touch. For big banks, that era may have already begun — with an under-the-wire surprise from a top regulator as the latest indication.

Why it matters: Bank watchdogs wanted to implement tougher regulations on these institutions in 2024, a belated crackdown spurred by the regional bank crisis. But easier rules are on the horizon instead, possibly raising risks for America's financial system.

The big picture: Banks scored two wins near the end of 2024 on multiple regulatory fronts.

• A set of plans mandating banks to have a larger financial cushion in the event of a crisis was watered down, a victory for interest groups. (The proposal is on hold and ultimately might die — at least in its current form — under President-elect Trump.)
• Big banks have long called for changes to the Federal Reserve's stress tests, a regular checkup on the sector's health. Now officials will move to do just that in 2025 — even as bank lobbying groups sue their regulator to force compliance with those new plans.

Zoom in: Two days before Christmas, the Fed said it will soon propose "significant changes" to the stress testing process that help determine the extent to which banks can boost dividends or buyback stock.

• Among the proposals: Allowing the public — including the banks themselves — to weigh in on the hypothetical scenarios designed to test banks' balance sheets.

What they're saying: The proposal "intends to give the Wall Street banks the keys to the stress tests, almost certainly making them largely predictable, highly gameable, and very favorable," Dennis Kelleher, chief executive of Better Markets, a nonprofit that advocates for stricter financial regulation, said in a statement.

Yes, but: The Fed says these changes, which also includes the possibility of averaging stress test results over two years, are a result of the "evolving legal landscape" and "changes in the framework of administrative law" — likely a nod to a major Supreme Court decision curtailing agency power.

The other side: Stress tests are meant to assess if banks had the wherewithal to keep lending during extreme, hypothetical economic backdrops.

• But the tests did not recently measure banks against an environment with rapidly rising interest rates, which helped spark the regional bank crisis nearly two years ago.

Allowing the public to weigh in might make stress test scenarios easier, but that is not a definite, Mark Calabria, a senior advisor and former director of financial regulation at the Cato Institute, tells Axios.

• "The assumptions are often not very stressful," says Calabria, who led the Federal Housing Finance Agency under Trump. "I see more public scrutiny here as a good thing."

The bottom line: The new Trump administration looks set to further ease up on financial regulations, adding to some wins notched during the Biden era.

One out of every six dollars the world's poorest governments received in revenue in 2024 went straight to foreigners in the form of debt service, per a new analysis from Debt Justice.

Why it matters: That number, which is at a 30-year high, represents "a devastating diversion of resources away from areas critical for long-term growth and development," per World Bank chief economist Indermit Gill.

The big picture: The 84 poorest countries in the world do include some, like India or Vietnam, that have very little external debt.

• More common, however, is the plight of countries such as Pakistan or Egypt, both of which spent over 40% of their government revenues on external debt service last year.

Zoom in: Laos is in particularly bad shape, with an external debt of $13.8 billion, most of which is owed to China.

• The small landlocked country borrowed billions of dollars from China to cover its share of Belt and Road projects, including a high-speed rail link from Bangkok to Guangzhou and Beijing.
• Scheduled payments on that debt will amount to over 70% of government revenues next year, in the unlikely event that they're paid in full.
• In lieu of cash payments, China is likely to demand ownership of Laotian land and infrastructure.

Between the lines: A lot of debt was wiped out in the 2000s under the HIPC (heavily indebted poor countries) program — but that only seems to have opened up the temptation to borrow more from China in particular.

• Low-income countries are rarely able to tap the international bond markets, which means that when they can't make their external debt obligations, they generally end up in arrears to other countries, including China.
• Debt renegotiation takes place under the oversight of the IMF, with sovereign creditors generally grouped together under the Paris Club.
• China, however, is not a member of the Paris Club — something that has made sovereign debt restructurings particularly fraught in recent years.

The bottom line: As Gill has written, "the poorest countries facing debt distress need debt relief if they are to have a shot at lasting prosperity."