These are the three big questions facing Apple in 2019, analyst says

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Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., arrives on stage during an event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2018.

Apple, like most of the major technology stocks, endured a volatile 2018.

But what lies ahead for Apple in 2019? RBC Capital’s Amit Daryanani posed three questions that could push or pull on Apple’s stock this year.

First, an abbreviated history of Apple’s past few months. In August, the iPhone-maker briefly became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach $1 trillion in market cap. Investor confidence was riding high on Apple, with revenue from Apple’s software and services businesses driving growth in the first half of last year.

Yet, since topping out in October, Apple’s stock has lost more than 30 percent. The ‘FAANG’ trade of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google-owned Alphabet has fallen out of favor on Wall Street. A chorus of analysts have cut Apple’s price target over the last two months, citing weakened expectations on iPhone production and sales.

Apple ended 2018 down nearly 7 percent for the year – the stock’s worst year of trading since the 2008 financial crisis. The company also never launched AirPower, a rare product launch miss, after announcing the wireless charging device in 2017.

Here are Daryanani’s questions about Apple’s future, as well as how he thinks things may play out in 2019.