Experts did away with the recent notion that ETFs are a better investment than betting on individual stocks on Wednesday.
David Nelson, chief strategist of Belpointe Asset Management, a Greenwich-based wealth management firm, said investors should shift attention back to individual stocks from overall indexes.
"We're past the time of index investing," he said in an interview on CNBC's "Closing Bell." "All the liquidity (the Fed) pumped in brought up the bad with the good, and we're seeing less of that."
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Peter Costa, president of Empire Executions, a New York City-based trading firm, said in the same interview he agreed with Nelson's analysis. "In a growing market, everyone's a genius," he said. "When the market starts selling off, that's when bottom-down research becomes very important."
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Both men agreed that stock picking would be the best way to invest in 2015, but their approach in picking stocks deviates.
Costa said he would be looking for the "few value plays left" in 2015. "In a world of over 4,800 different equities, there's got to be ten or 15 stocks that are undervalued."
Meanwhile, Nelson said he would be looking for companies with "real bottom-line growth where they're really earning the numbers and not buying back stocks."