Investors breathed a sigh of relief as they turned over their calendars at the end of 2020. Few were sorry to see the back of a turbulent year that drove nation after nation to their worst economic contractions in generations: over the course of 2020, the U.S. gross domestic product shrank around 3.5 per cent, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the U.S., but still fared slightly better than Canada — where Statistics Canada estimated GDP shrank by just over 5 per cent — and the U.K., which suffered an eye-watering 9.9 per cent drop in GDP, according to the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics.