Stock futures little changed on last trading day of 2015

“But it will be a year when active stock pickers can do well if they pick the right names”.

Wall Street closed the year on a sour note Thursday, with all three major indices trading lower on the final day of 2015.

Headed into the last day of trading, the S&P 500 .SPX was up 0.22 percent for the year-to-date.

But the closing of the books on the worst year for the Dow and S&P 500 since 2008, after both repeatedly had punched through record highs during the year, left a sense of an end to the seven-year bull run since the financial crisis.

Small-cap stocks lagged on the way to their first annual drop since 2011, with the Russell 2000 Index down 5.7 per cent. The gauge rose as much as 7.6 per cent to an all-time high in June, but faltered as its energy companies plunged 45 per cent and consumer discretionary shares lost more than 10 per cent.

With about 15 minutes to the close, the Dow Jones industrial average (Dow Jones Global Indexes:.DJI) declined 127 points, or 0.73 percent, to 17,475, with Apple (AAPL) leading decliners and General Electric (GE) the only advancer.

SECTOR VIEW: All of the 10 sectors in the S&P 500 index were down, led by a 0.9 percent decline in consumer staples stocks, a category that includes Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble.

“I think this is going to be a short-lived bounce in energy prices”, said Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist at Boston Private Wealth.

The S&P 500 index, regarded as a benchmark for the broader stock market, lost 0.7 percent for the year.

Apple was down 1.92% weighing on the Nasdaq. Energy and materials stocks, which have been battered recently as commodities prices sank, fared slightly better than the rest of the market.

Crude oil and natural gas prices recovered some of their losses from the day before.

The Dow lost 398.04 points, or 2.2 percent. Its stock has been pressured by concerns about potentially weak iPhone sales and ended the year down 4.5 percent, its first annual loss since 2008.

The Nasdaq gained 41.08 points, or 0.8 per cent. Volume has been thin all week, and the number of shares changing hands on US exchanges yesterday was the lowest for a full session this year. Energy shares rose after crude oil erased a 1 per cent drop. Gold rose $40 cents to $1,060.20 an ounce, silver fell 4 cents to $13.80 an ounce and copper slid 1 cent to $2.14 a pound. The dollar fell to 120.21 yen from 120.55 yen, while the euro fell to $1.0859 from $1.0924.