As well as Japanese stocks have done this year, their performance pales in comparison to natural gas, up more than 80 percent on the futures market this year.

Other major foreign exchanges did well, too. British stocks were up for the third straight year with London's benchmark FTSE 100 ending 2005 higher by 16.7 percent, which is just below 1999's 17.8-percent gain, the index's record.

The world's best stock index was in a smaller, emerging market, Turkey's Istanbul IMKB-100, which soared 59 percent.

Then there was New York. The world's largest exchange posted record volumes and exactly nothing else. The Dow Jones industrial average closed out the year down 0.61 percent. Given an average 2.3-percent yield, total return on the Dow industrials was less than 2 percent.

Despite that, the NYSE was not the world's worst stock market. That distinction goes to the Caracas Stock Exchange, which plummeted as investors fled the consequences of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' wealth-redistribution policies.