The Nasdaq is about to do something it hasn't done in nearly four decades

It's no secret to market watchers that the Nasdaq has seen a monster year, up nearly 30 percent year to date and on pace for 14 months of nearly uninterrupted gains.

But there's one more record to add to the books: the technology-heavy index is on pace for its sixth straight positive year, its longest annual string of gains since its six-year streak ended in 1980.

The Nasdaq also has posted a record number of all-time high closes this year.

These highs come as many are concerned with some parallels being drawn between the index's recent price action and that of the dot-com bubble era. Some see the rally petering out next year.

"It's probably going to push a little bit higher into early 2018," said Max Wolff, chief economist of The Phoenix Group, Thursday on CNBC's "Trading Nation."

"We would say that both tech and the rally overall is getting really long in the tooth, so somewhere toward the middle point of 2018 we think this is going to run out of steam. But we're not quite there yet. Tech is expensive, but at least it's growing, and there's plenty else you could buy that's expensive and not growing," he said.

Meanwhile, the Nasdaq and an index comprised of semiconductor stocks have diverged recently, a development that concerns Miller Tabak equity strategist Matt Maley. The Nasdaq and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index have been generally correlated this year, but have deviated from one another in the last month.

"One of the things we have to look at is that as much as the 'FANGs' were certainly a key leadership area of the tech group, we also got a lot of leadership out of the semiconductor stocks," he said, referring to the tech heavyweight quartet of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google-parent Alphabet.

"They've begun to diverge a little bit. They're starting to sell off a little bit; you can see the semiconductor index has come down," he said, calling the deviation "worrisome."

This may pose a concern for the broader technology space, Maley suggested, if the divergence continues.

The Nasdaq was modestly lower Friday.

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