We've reached that point in the year where we have get to read through scores of best of the year lists.  Some are instructive or illuminating.  Others, not so much.  We don't track market news closely at the watch--for that you should be reading Nivine Richie at our KnowNOW Finance blog.  But we found The Ten Biggest Market Moments of 2011 list from Joshua Brown--The Reformed Broker--to provide one succinct summary of the year's big business events.  For example, #5:

Bank of America in Free Fall - Of all the spectacular crashing and burning of 2011, nothing even comes close to the destruction in shares of Bank of America, a company that lost almost two thirds of its market capitalization over the last 12 months.  Every effort was made by management to please the investor base, from asset sales to mass layoff announcements (40,000!) to open conference calls hosted by mutual fund managers who were in disbelief at how low the stock was sinking with every passing day.  BAC dropped from a January high of 15 to 10 by August - but it was just getting warmed up; from August to November it was cut in half again, trading to as low as 5.08 by Thanksgiving and wrecking the funds of John Paulson as well as the careers of several boldfaced mutual fund managers like Bill Miller and Bruce Berkowitz.

And #1:

Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple - We knew that one day, the cancer in Steve Jobs’s liver would force him out, but we were never truly prepared for theannouncement to come.  After fourteen years at the helm of Apple and one of the most miraculous corporate turnarounds in history, on August 24th Jobs told Apple that he could no longer serve the company in his condition.  The stock sold off that night on the news but quickly recovered, Steve would live to see Apple trade at a new all-time high and eventually become the most valuable company in America.  On October 5th, Steve Jobs passes away and the world both mourns his passing and celebrates the amazing revolution he’s sparked from a garage in Los Altos, California.

Read the full list here. 

(Hat tip Barry Ritholtz)