WALL Street was generally calmer in 2014 than in previous years, but that doesn’t mean the stock market was devoid of drama.

    Big selloffs in biotechnology and social media stocks had strategists predicting doom in the spring, and the plunge in oil prices has clouded the outlook for the coming year. It was a year when Cynk Technology, a development-stage company with no revenue, was briefly worth US$6 billion, and when a long-forgotten closed-end fund focused on Cuba — the Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund — saw more trading in one day in December than it had in six years.

    With that in mind, Reuters asked Wall Street strategists a few questions on odd things to watch for in 2015.

    Shares of Apple Inc., the most valuable publicly traded U.S. company, will finish higher for a sixth straight year. With a current market value of about US$663 billion, if one were to pick a company that would be the first to hit US$1 trillion in value, Apple’s a safe choice — but not next year, investors said. The iWatch, its latest product, may not be enough to propel the stock further.

    “I don’t really see this company as having another blockbuster category of products. The watch doesn’t feel like a great idea. I’m kind of out of the Apple mystique thing,” said Kim Forrest, vice president and senior analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

    With its gains Friday, the NASDAQ Composite Index sits just about 200 points shy of the vaunted 5,000 level, which it has not seen in nearly 15 years — and its all-time intraday high of 5,132.52 reached March 10, 2000, isn’t far off.

    “I think NASDAQ will test and probably achieve higher highs than we did in 2000 because I think we’re in a secular bull market that has another eight to 10 years left to run,” said Jeffrey Saut, managing director at Raymond James & Associates.

    For the NASDAQ to hit 5,000, it would take a gain of 4 percent. And to get to that all-time high, it would take about a 7 percent increase. Whether that’s warranted is something over which investors disagree.

    “What we need now is for fundamentals like revenue and earnings to catch up with current valuations,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago.

    After a series of market-crippling operational glitches in recent years, found everywhere from NASDAQ to options markets, investors are bracing for more such events.

    This year, a gold-mining exchange-traded fund, Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF, dove 10 percent in the waning seconds of trading one day in early December. (SD-Agencies)