Like a roller coaster returning to the platform, the stock market in the United States ended the last day of trading in 2011 just about where it started the year. But what a wild ride it was in between.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, the main gauge of broad market performance, closed on Friday at 1,257.60, finishing the year nearly dead even with its 2010 close of 1,257.64, which is technically down 0.003 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average of 30 blue-chip American stocks fared better, closing the year with a 5.5 percent gain at 12,217.56.

Market strategists predict the S.& P. will stay in a range of 1,100 to 1,500 by the end of 2012, depending on how investors balance economic growth, fiscal policy, corporate earnings and the European debt crisis, as well as the potential for change after the November election.

Yet, looking back at 2011, it was a flat finale that told little of the volatility preceding it, when political turmoil, financial upheaval and even natural disasters left almost no corner of the markets untouched.