Tuesday will mark the first anniversary of the panic bottom that ended the worst bear market for stocks since the Great Depression. Unless something terrible happens between now and then, the year since will have produced the greatest bull market since the 1940s.

From the afternoon the S&P 500 peaked on Oct. 9, 2007, to the close at the bottom on March 9, 2009, the index lost 55.6%, including dividends. Since then, as of Thursday's close, with three market days to go till the anniversary of the bottom, stocks have gained 69.1%, again including dividends.

Feeling a little whiplashed? It s understandable and it may continue.

Looking forward, plenty of people say stocks great performance over the last year is the warm-up to more big gains this year. They say it signals a rousing economic recovery that will lift stocks back to new all-time highs fairly quickly. Another camp says that there really isn't any economic recovery at all. They say the last year has just been a bear market rally and that it's now time for the economy to make a double-dip and for stocks to hit new lows.

If you re trying to be a contrarian, faced with this dichotomy, it's hard to know what exactly you re supposed to be betting against. The smart bet may be simply that nothing at all will happen this year. This is consistent with my view of the economy, as I explained here last week. We're in a recovery, but not really an expansion.

I've written here many times over the last six months that I'm expecting a major correction in stocks. If that means a nasty drop of 20% or more, then I've been wrong. But in another sense, maybe I've been right: There are actually two completely different ways you can get a correction.

One of them is the big scary drop that we haven't had. The other is for stocks to do nothing, to pretty much just sit there while time ticks away. Technically, that's called a consolidation, not a correction. Think of it as running out the clock, letting earnings and the economy grow into the lofty expectations embedded in stock prices.

So far, that kind of consolidation is precisely what we've seen. Basically, the S&P 500 has done little over the last four months. It wouldn't surprise me if that inertia persisted for the rest of the year.

There's another way of looking at the bull market of the last year. It's somewhat less encouraging, and I think it helps buttress my expectations that the coming year won't bring investors much joy.

Consider stocks priced not in money, but in gold. In other words, instead of thinking of stocks as investments you make in order to increase your wealth in dollars, think of them as something to increase your wealth in gold. After all, you don't want to make money for its own sake you want the money for what you can buy with it. Gold is a symbol for all the things you might want to buy.

Let's say stocks double, measured in dollars. Terrific, right? Not necessarily. Suppose the price of gold doubles, too. Not so terrific. You can't afford to buy anymore gold now than you could have before your stocks doubled.

It's easy to track stocks priced in gold because the price of the S&P 500 and the price of an ounce of gold vary closely with one another. As of Thursday's close, they were only about $10 apart, with the S&P 500 at 1123, and gold at about 1133.

How about a year ago, on the day of the bottom for stocks on March 9? That day the S&P 500 closed at 676.53. Gold closed at 920.85. That means that one "unit" of the S&P could have bought 73% of an ounce of gold.

Today, with stocks and gold each having risen over the last year but with stocks rising more one "unit" of the S&P can buy 99% of an ounce of gold. All we have to do is compare 73% a year ago to 99% now, and we can see that stocks, priced in gold, have risen 34.9%. Here's a chart showing the S&P 500 priced in gold over the last year.

A 34.9% gain for stocks priced in gold is pretty good for a year's work. But it's a far cry from the 69.1% that stocks have gained when they are priced in dollars. Do you see what has happened here? Stocks have made you lots of dollars. But the dollar itself has fallen in value compared to the real and eternal value represented by gold.

Here's the most troubling part. The entire 34.9% gain made by stocks priced in gold, that is was achieved in just the first five weeks of rallying from the March 2009 bottom. That means for most of the last year, since mid-April, while it has appeared that stocks have been furiously rallying, in reality they've just been sitting there. All risk, no reward.

Here's the insight I get from these facts. In just the first five weeks after the bottom, stocks completely absorbed the good news that the economy was not going to fall into depression, as was widely feared at the time, and that the recession would soon be over. The 34.9% rally, priced in gold, is pretty close to the 28% recovery in expected corporate earnings we've experienced since the bottom.

So why, then, did stocks priced in dollars, not gold continue so much higher? Simple: We experienced inflation-induced growth. Throw enough stimulus money, an "extended period" of zero interest rates from the Fed, and a big dose of government debt at the economy, and you will get some growth and, eventually, lots of inflation.

But there's nothing more inflation-sensitive than gold. So, priced in gold, stocks are unable to perpetuate the illusion that inflationary growth is even growth at all. It's just inflation.

I'd love nothing more than to see stocks move higher and gold move lower. That would tell me we're getting true growth, not merely inflation.

Beware if we see the opposite. If stocks fall and gold rallies or for that matter, if stocks just consolidate while gold rallies it means we're seeing all inflation and no growth. If that happens, then all bets are off for this economic recovery.