There was so little confidence in anything other than the US, the fear was that America was going to be the only game in town, with potentially destabilising consequences for the US and the world.
Not any more. Now the positive buzz is all about Europe and the angst is targeted at the US.
Good news from the real economy has sent European markets upwards, despite inflation falling firmly into negative territory. So far in 2015 the main European stock index (Euro Stoxx 600) has risen more than 15 per cent. By contrast the S&P 500 year has not really risen at all.
Performance of indices over 2015 in local currency
Source: FE Analytics
That isn't due to any alarming twist in the domestic recovery story. Though the data has disappointed, more often than not, since January, the main US indicators still look pretty good - especially the jobs market.
Going forward, we can also expect cheap oil and the strong dollar to put money in the pockets of US consumers and boost consumption.
Yet the news from Wall Street is decidedly mixed. Profit margins have been falling, and the latest corporate earnings season was a rude reminder to investors that the profits of big US companies are much more dependent on foreign sales than the broader economy is.
In the last three months of 2014 companies in the S&P 500 that are wholly focused on the US market saw top line sales growth of around 5 per cent year on year and 10 per cent growth in earnings. More export-oriented companies saw their total sales fall 3 per cent in the same period and profit growth in the low single digits. We can expect to see an even bigger hit to the earnings of US multinationals in the first quarter.
You might think this shift in relative confidence was healthy. If we were worried about the US being too much the centre of the action, surely we should be less worried after two months of European outperformance?
Perhaps. It is certainly true that Europe’s economy has surprised on the upside in recent months, with a surge in activity in Germany and even signs of improvement in France and Italy. The European Central Bank (ECB) took far too long to start a full-scale programme of sovereign bond purchases - quantitative easing (QE). But if there was a good time to come late to the QE party the ECB seems to have chosen it.
Credit growth has been positive since the start of the year and the fall in the oil price was starting to boost consumers, long before the formal start of QE. We saw at his latest press conference that Mario Draghi is more than happy to take the credit for any upturn in economic activity that results.
So yes, there is some basis for this wave of euro-optimism. But that optimism can hardly be said to extend to the currency.
Quite the opposite. Investors are assuming that the ECB will continue to welcome a weaker currency and that European leaders will continue to pin most of their recovery hopes on demand from abroad.
If you dig a little deeper into Europe’s ‘outperformance’ since the start of the year, this uncomfortable reality comes through clearly.
That nearly 16 per cent return on European equities since January 1 is measured in euros: if you translate it into dollars, the rise is less than 2 per cent.
Similarly, it’s only dollar-based investors who’ve seen a flat or negative return on the S&P 500 so far this year. If your base currency is euros, your return from investing in the US year to date has been about 13 per cent.
Performance of S&P 500 over 2015 in euros
Source: FE Analytics
In other words, when you take account of the currency, Europe’s 'outperformance' since the start of 2015 almost completely disappears. It’s all about the euro and the dollar.
That European focus on currency weakening and exports is not very healthy in a world in which the eurozone is already running a current account surplus of more than 2 per cent of GDP, and Germany’s is now among the highest in the world.
But the further fall in the euro in recent weeks suggests that investors are willing to go along with this dodgy economic logic - just as long as the ECB does.
The good news is that for the time being the US recovery looks strong enough to shrug off any negative hit from the super soar-away dollar.
We have to hope so, given how important US growth is to continued recovery in Europe, Japan and beyond. But investors who measure their returns in dollars may find the world’s reliance on the US more difficult to swallow.
Stephanie Flanders (pictured on page 1) is global market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management. The views expressed above are her own and should not be taken as investment advice.