It_s always interesting to see if New Year_s predictions come true, especially on Wall Street.

But few investment strategists predicted in 1989 what spectacular returns were in store for the _90s. 10 years ago the Japanese economy was still a miracle, the U.S. securities industry was still scarred from the _87 crash and the Dow Jones industrial average stood at 2,750. The 1990s came in and are going out with a bang. The Gulf War helped spark a recession and a bear market at the beginning of the decade, but that all turned around mid-way through the ’90s. By the end of the decade, the surging stock market had fueled the longest economic expansion and bull market in U.S. history. “No one would have ever expected to see the kind of change in the inflation picture, the kind of change in what stocks performed well. No one would have expected the technology stocks to do as well as they did in the decade of the ’90s,” said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer, First Albany. The 1980s was the decade of greed and consumption and the top performing stocks reflected that, but only a handful of the winners repeated their performance in the _90s. Circuit City (CC) gained over 8,000 percent in the _80s but managed to advance only a fraction of that this decade. The Limited (LTD) and Hasbro (HAS) followed a similar path. Home Depot (HD) was one of just a few stocks that was able to post strong 4-digit gains in both decades. Wal-Mart (WMT) couldn_t and Dillard_s (DDS) actually lost ground. Technology has been the hallmark of the market this decade. It has produced spectacular returns; many of the stand-out companies didn_t even exist 10 years ago. America Online (AOL) is the top technology stock of the decade with a return since going public in 1982 of 79,000 percent. Dell Computer (DELL) is second and then EMC Corp. (EMC). Next in line among the top-performing tech stocks is Cisco Systems (CSCO) with a gain of 64,000 percent, followed by Internet incubator, CMGI (CMGI). In turn the Nasdaq market, which is heavily tech-waited in the stocks that trade on its electronic exchange, has grown in importance.