As investors, we should never allow a year to pass by without extracting the important lessons from the critical movements of money that took place. A look back at 2014 holds great economic learning and offers key financial wisdom. It was a year of volatility and marked instability but also one of resiliency and measured recovery.

From the start of the year, we were presented with a mixed and scrambled bag of economic indicators and rash, often Pavlovian markets that drooled over every word from The Fed. Wall Street slobbered over good data and dismissed bad data as the markets ballooned in a defiant display of curious denial. It was the best of times and the worst of times, but many only read the byline of the former … as weak job growth was chalked up to bad timing and falling consumer confidence was blamed on bad weather.

Every bold step we took toward our economic recuperation in 2014 was offset by nagging setbacks that made our fiscal healing a study in ambiguity.

The operative word for 2014 was perhaps “kneejerk” as stocks rose and fell with each report on jobs, housing, GDP, and inflation. The year started with a near Shakespearean debt ceiling drama and ended with the final act of QE. And through the applause and the feigned ovation … the ever-aching Achilles heel of the American economic recovery continued to be vexed by record low Labor Participation Rates and stagnant Wage Growth.

Suddenly America's storied rise from the grips of the Great Recession became dubbed as “the slowest economic recovery in US History.” After six years of easy money and excessive federal intervention into the markets, we found ourselves asking what normal really looked like and where the dollar would be when it was all over.

2014 was also a year of unfamiliar and counterintuitive concepts like “too-low” inflation, a global banking crisis, ultra-cheap oil, silver rationing, and the dubious rise of the Shanghai Gold Exchange.