The wind it was howlin’ and the snow was outrageous.
We chopped through the night and we chopped through the dawn.
When he died I was hopin’ that it wasn’t contagious,
But I made up my mind that I had to go on.
– Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy, “Isis”

That sums up the weather conditions in these parts at the moment. But I’m not chopping through the night or the dawn or anything else at the moment; just sitting on the couch. I told my wife I couldn’t go out and shovel the walk just yet because I had something to do for work. So I made up my mind that I had to go blog.

A few items before shutting down ’til 2009:

Here are the new circuit-breaker levels for the first quarter of 2009.

US Regulators Poised To Miss Deadline For CDS Clearing (Dow Jones, via EasyBourse) Excerpt:
A pact between three U.S. financial regulators to coordinate approval of central clearing for credit derivatives is showing cracks as their year-end start-up deadline approaches. …
The Federal Reserve, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission have collectively approved only one of the three clearing proposals from U.S.-based exchanges. …
While NYSE Euronext (NYX) received the go-ahead last week for a U.S. operation, following the launch of its European platform, credit-default swap clearing proposals from CME Group Inc. (CME) and IntercontinentalExchange Inc. (ICE) still await the green light from some regulators.

My take on that issue: coordinated would be good; fast is paramount. These platforms will help reduce risk and increase transparency, and our economy needs all of those goods, sooner rather than later.

NYSE Euronext: Rebound Likely Zachary Scheidt, via the Seeking Alpha blog) Excerpt: Over the past year, NYX has had to play defense as changing technology and volatile markets have pressured the company. The NYSE floor and open outcry system are quickly becoming a thing of the past, and the exchange has had to scramble to keep up with competition. But hefty investments in new platforms have increased the performance of its systems and it now appears that NYX is winning back business from competing exchanges.

I can’t comment on our stock price, as NYSE Euronext doesn’t offer guidance. But I can tell you that the NYSE Trading Floor and their electronic tools are an integral part of our beginning to win back business and are on their way to becoming a trading model for the future, not a thing of the past. Will invite Zachary in for a first-hand look.

BEST STOCK MARKET BLOG POSTS OF 2008! (Clean version) (Dinosaur Trader) — DT has again asked more than two dozen members of blog gang (including your humble blogger) for their favorite posts of the year. Some good reading here. And DT himself writes a couple of sentences introducing each post. On the “clean version” linked here, those intro’s are PG-rated. On the other version, DT spiced up the intro’s to generate a little more traffic, and they’re R-rated and heading toward NSFW (that’s not safe for work, for you Web newbies). I can’t link to the second version on this G-rated blog, but it’s not hard to find either. And it’s funny. Hey, I had to check it out — it’s my job! Really it is!

The good folks at the Seeking Alpha blog for the first time picked up an Exchanges post, and offered to pick up some others now and then. That prompts me to dust off my five-word acceptance speech: “There must be some mistake.” Seriously, thanks, SA; glad to join you.

Time to grab that snow shovel now. Reminder: full trading day on Friday, Jan. 2, 2009. See you there. One last bit of historical trivia for the year:

Today in NYSE History
31 Dec. 1999 — The NYSE closed at 1:00 p.m. to allow technicians to prepare for the possibility of “Y2K” computer glitches. There were none.

Ah, Y2K. I was one of many lucky colleagues who “volunteered” to work that historic millennium-beginning New Year’s Eve. A few of representing different areas of our business were holed up in a conference room all night, surrounded by PCs and phones, ready for anything. Here is an excerpt from my notes that night.

12:00 a.m.: Lights still on. Phones working. Systems fine. Good work, folks.
12:05 a.m.: Lights still on. Phones working. Systems fine.
12:10 a.m.: Lights still on. Can we go home now?

Happy New Year to you all. Easy on that egg nog. Aw, what the heck, go whole-hog on the egg nog. As my grandmother used to say, “Eh! It’s a holiday!”