Question: What are three of the biggest financial current factors that will play an even more significant role in 1999?

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 led 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.

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. He figures to be just as crucial a force in setting the tone for investor perception and confidence in 1999.

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. As 1999 winds into the year 2000, Y2K experts to some degree hold future stability or chaos within their grasp.