This was the year of the yoga bunny: the downward-facing rabbit. For the first half of the year you might have thought that there was a little overgrazing, as patches of the market seemed to be eaten bare by too many rabbits. From August to October, the Hang Seng fell 30%, everyone was losing money and there was no need to rabbit in. The furry beasts had fleas; they were all bugs bunny. By the time the culling was over, there was barely any grass left and certainly no bucks well spent. Come the close of the year, the Hang Seng recovered to losing a slightly less 25%.

Hip hop has always been the music of choice for bunnies on the make, and they were able to leveret it this year into making the rabbit run. Over the year, the index gained more than 70%. From the New Year through to early summer, the Hang Seng was a rabbit force-feeding itself and adding half its body weight. The summer and autumn were not bad, but indigestion set in and by the end of October some weight had been lost. From there to the year’s end, the winter fat came on strong.

A year to remember, for the good and the bad. Through the summer the Fire Rabbit flew, as if on a hareplane. Then, like Icarus, he was living on burrowed time and suddenly turned into the ether bunny, falling unconscious back to below where he had begun the year. After such a lop-sided decline, the bunny realised there was no such thing as a furry lunch and did what he could to recover some ground. Despite the fall, the index put on 25% but finished the year lower than the beginning.

If you had a hutch that it was going to be a good year, the initial spring jump may have had you hare-ing along. Yet from there to the beginning of winter, it was as if a ferret had caught the rabbit’s foot. Free of the trap and coming into winter proper, it was as if the Wood Rabbit was off on his bunnymoon. By the end of the year, our Rabbit had turned into a million-hare and lived hoppily ever after with the index having risen nearly 80% for the year.