US stocks have a flat year

With the last trading day of 2011 over, Wall Street’s annual results are in: The Dow Jones industrial average is up 5.5 percent for the year, the Nasdaq composite index is down 1.8 percent for the year and the S&P 500 didn’t budge at all in 2011.

In a quiet trading day – many investors are on vacation – the Dow fell 69 points, or 0.6 percent, to 12,218. The S&P 500 lost 5 points, or 0.4 percent, to close at 1,257.60. That’s a 0.00 percent difference from 1,257.64 on Dec. 31, 2010, the New York Times noted. The Nasdaq dropped 9 points, or 0.3 percent, to end the day at 2,605.

McDonald’s Corp. was the best performer on the Dow this year, gaining 31 percent, the Associated Press reported. The company stock that fared the worst: Bank of America Corp., which fell 58 percent.

Meanwhile, major European and Asian indexes fell by double-digit percentages in 2011, according to the Times.

In 2011, Britain’s FTSE 100 index fell 5.6 percent; Germany’s DAX lost 14.7 percent; France’s CAC 40 decreased 17 percent; Japan’s Nikkei 225 slid more than 17 percent; and China’s Hang Seng Index dropped nearly 20 percent.

"Today's action is unsurprisingly tepid as market players dink around with small trades to close the book on 2011," James Deporre, founder and CEO of Shark Asset Management, wrote on the Street’s Real Money site. "There is little edge, and there won't be until things pick up again next week.”

More from GlobalPost: CEO pay increases by a median 27%