U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday as crude oil prices continued their descent, but the S&P closed out a third straight year of double-digit gains. Jefferies Chief Global Head of Equity Strategy Sean Darby says U.S. economic strength should pull up global emerging markets in 2015.

SHOWS: HONG KONG, CHINA (JANUARY 2, 2015) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL)

1. SLATE, READING (English): 'WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON GLOBAL EQUITIES IN 2015?

2. JEFFERIES, CHIEF GLOBAL HEAD OF EQUITY STRATEGY, SEAN DARBY, SAYING:

'Well I think last year there was a great deal of optimism about the global economy and fortunately that rolled over. But the one big surprise was the underlying strength of the U.S. and we think that continues into 2015 pulling up most of the global emerging markets alongside it. So I think there has been a really big powerful driver for the global consumer on the back of falling energy prices and we still think that runs through into global markets well into mid 2015. So I think there are probably some surprises on the upside and possibly in January we get some sovereign QE being undertaken by the ECB.'

3. SLATE, READING (English): 'WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON THE GEOPOLITICAL EVENTS IN RUSSIA?

4. JEFFERIES, CHIEF GLOBAL HEAD OF EQUITY STRATEGY, SEAN DARBY, SAYING:

'Well the interesting thing I think about the geopolitical events in Russia is that the Europeans are actually quite reluctant to take sanctions any further. It is very much pushed by the Obama team. The second thing is that within Russia, actually Putin's rating is actually quite high and that really is sort of the litmus test for how far the Russian economy can withstand these sanctions and at the moment it seems that Putin is not necessarily willing to renegotiate from what happened in Crimea. I think overall the sorts of problems that have transpired in Russia are more to do with capital outflows, not necessarily all to do with the oil price. A lot of the oil and gas contracts in Russia are actually longer term. So it is more of a confidence factor on capital outflows, but I would suggest that what happened in Russia is probably going to pan out in some of the commodity based emerging markets over the next 18 months. Places like Brazil and to some extent South Africa, and maybe even Indonesia, where commodity prices have dropped very precipitously and there is quite a lot of dollar financing that has got to go on for these corporates, is going to actually weigh a lot on economic and market sentiment going through 2015 as well.'