Question: Who were the biggest corporate winners in 1998?

Investment Life Expert Response:

When the stock market's late summer swoon silenced some of Wall Street's most bullish analysts, Abby Joseph Cohen roared even louder. She encouraged investors to put more of their money in stocks, and held fast to her prediction that the Dow Jones industrial average would end the year at 9,300. Cohen, the chief market strategist at Goldman Sachs & Co., has long been one of Wall Street's most recognizable bulls. As the market soared in recent years, her name became synonymous with the market's boom, and in turn, with Goldman. In October, Goldman rewarded her with a partnership.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan didn't simply engineer interest rate cuts to keep the financial markets on track. In September, the most influential Fed branch in the nation, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, helped arrange a bailout of Long-Term Capital, a controversial intervention that Greenspan defended as a move to calm markets worldwide.

There's a bull galloping its way into 1999, despite a plunge in August and September, when the Dow Jones industrial average fell to the 7,400 level after reaching a new high of 9,337.37 in mid-July. And Internet stocks are leading the way with huge gains in '98. Many people are asking, however, if the soaring Net stocks are riding a bubble of speculation that will soon burst. America Online became an even bigger Internet power with the planned purchase of Netscape.

Apple Computer continued its comeback from a prolonged slump with the introduction of the iMac, the futuristic-looking computer with a rock bottom price. Apple sold 278,000 iMacs in its first six weeks on the market and ended up with its first profitable fiscal year since 1995. Most significantly, 29 percent of the iMACs were purchased by first-time computer buyers.

Appealing to the millions of baby boomers who drove the bug-eyed Beetle, Volkswagen introduced a svelter, quieter and air-conditioned version of the 1960s classic to North America. In six months, VW sold more than 40,000 of the cars. The new Beetle, with an engine in the front, unlike its predecessor, is helping the automaker shed its image of building reliable but staid cars.

States unanimously embraced a $206 billion settlement of health claims against the tobacco industry, but the real winners are expected to be the major cigarette manufacturers, who are now free from claims for reimbursement to the states for the cost of treating sick smokers. The makers of Marlboro, Camel, Lucky Strike and Newport cigarettes already have begun passing on the cost of the deal to smokers through higher prices.

Furby: The hottest toy of the year. It retailed for about $30, but because it was in short supply, it went for $200 or more in newspaper classifieds.

The ``Y2K bug'' is earning a lot of money for computer nerds who might have some expertise in eradicating it. The bug hatched early in the computer age, when cost-conscious programmers used only the last two digits of a year, so that 1998 reads as 98. As a result, the computer might not know what to do when 99 becomes 00. It's given rise to some hysteria, including warnings that planes will fall from the sky and civilization as we know it will end. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.