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Up or down year hinges on final day’s trade

The last trading day in 2015 for the Dow and S&P 500 is akin to a winner-take-all Game 7. The reason: Both well-known U.S. stock indexes are in danger of posting their first negative year of returns since the dark days of 2008, when the Dow plunged nearly 34% and the S&P 500 cratered almost 39% amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

It’s going to be a close call for both indexes. Heading into Thursday’s finale on Wall Street, the broad Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index is clinging to a gain of 0.22% for the year.

And the blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average, home to 30 of the USA’s most iconic companies, is down 1.2% in 2015 — and will need to rally more than 219.20 points to finish the year in the black.

The sideways price action on Wall Street was correctly forecast at the start of 2015 by two stock strategists. David Kostin of Goldman Sachs and Jonathan Glionna of Barclays both predicted a relatively “flat” year for U.S. stocks. Both kicked off the year touting S&P 500 year-end 2015 price targets of 2100. The broad market gauge closed Wednesday at 2063.36, less than 2 percentage points below their identical bearish targets.

Wall Street, of course, is rooting for a big rally on the final day of 2015. The reason? An up year for stocks sends a more positive message to investors than gloomy headlines trumpeting the first down year for stocks since 2008.

Game on! The bulls and bears face off Thursday on Wall Street.