What a year it’s been. True, it was a little touch and go in places — early February, early August, mid-October and mid-December come to mind — but if you followed me and focused on the important things, then you scored some great stock returns, like 8.0% in Acxiom Corp. (ACXM) and 5.7% in Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories (RDY).

So, what were the important things for 2014? Not earnings, though they had their place. Not GDP growth, though it deserved a glance. Not innovation, though, of course, it is vital.

The important things were central banks’ tenacious focus on monetary policy accommodation, and low inflation. That’s it; we don’t need to make it more complicated.

Put those two together and add a touch of those other elements, and you are going to have a good year. Stock returns owe more than 85% of their growth to macroeconomic factors, not the brilliance of product managers or C-level executives. This is the central banks’ world; we only live in it.

While it worked for the United States, it remains to be seen if Japan, China and the eurozone, who are currently launching U.S.-style quantitative easing programs, will have the same success. The result is that I think we will probably see a renewed run in assets during the next nine months to three years – and this run has the potential to shock the senses.

While the picture is bright looking ahead, it’s really when we look back that we see the stage is set for higher prices in 2015 and beyond.

This chart shows the relative strength of the S&P 500 vs. gold prices — essentially it is the benchmark index divided by gold. It is a shorthand way of looking at the boom and bust of commodity cycles. When the green line is rising, equities perform better than gold and, likewise, when it’s falling, commodities are faring better than equities.

The last great commodity “super cycle,” roughly 2000-2013, was driven by an emerging markets inflation cycle, according to the Cornerstone Macro economists. Since many emerging market banks are now focused on unwinding the excesses of inflation by raising rates, commodity prices are falling dramatically.

A great analog to the current cycle was the period of roughly 1980 to 2000, when inflation excesses of the 1970s abated, gold fell and stock returns rose for 20 years. Now as the emerging markets inflation cycle ends again, the commodity super-cycle has collapsed — leading commodities to fall and stock returns to rise.

Will it last 20 years again? Hard to say, but it’s possible so long as inflation remains tamed both overseas and domestically. The concept and pattern certainly suggest that the recent equity advances are in tune with the historical relationship between inflation and commodities, and thus is not just some random, isolated set of events.

So, it’s likely not a surprise that as we close out 2014 and look ahead to 2015, I’m fully weighted to the bullish side in my Trader’s Advantage recommendations.  There’s a bullish idea I want to share with you today that might surprise you.

It’s a scrappy U.S. automobile manufacturer that has been under attack at every turn this year for its mind-blowing inattention to safety and designs that have not exactly lit the world on fire. But all the bad news has made shares of General Motors (GM) pretty cheap after a lousy spin around 2014, and that might be enough to fire up bulls looking for value among cyclicals. Below are the one-month and three-year charts.

Buy GM common at $34.95 limit, good till canceled. If filled, set up to sell all at the final target of $37.05 limit, good till cancelled. I don’t have a stop loss set at this time, but I will provide one if the open orders get executed.

Jon Markman operates the investment firm Markman Capital Insights. He also offers a daily trading advisory service, Trader’s Advantage, and CounterPoint Options, a service that helps individual traders make steady, consistent profits with volatility-related instruments.