speaking of 01 Jan, see:
On December 1, 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved a rule change that will eliminate the ability of Depository Trust Company (DTC) participants – including **COMPANY NAME** – to request physical certificates for securities positions participating in the Direct Registration System (DRS). This change will take effect on January 1, 2009.

Currently your account is set up to automatically generate a physical certificate each time a trade is settled. This functionality will be disabled on December 31, 2008. All security purchases in your account that settle after the December 31, 2008, will be held in your **COMPANY NAME** account, and a physical certificate will not be automatically generated. Details about the new regulations are listed below….
http://www.jsmineset.com/

And, to your point, I saw a brief demo from, IIRC, ICA, that was pointing out that the vast majority of peep are still fueling The Font of the Eternal Bid, via 401(k) plans..as of 1 Nov..

When peep have a little ‘down-time’ into the year-end, that could, well, change..

I am dreading the clock tick and midnight Jan 01. That’s when the herd can bolt and not have to pay taxes for a year and a quarter. Even though many of them are tax negative on their shares I’ve got to think there are quite a few long term holders who are wanting to dump in fear of the next leg down. Also, with some stocks paying some juicy dividends right now we could see some serious shuffling of the deck as well. I’ve loaded up on ITM covered calls just in case. In mid January I’ll reassess, though I may be gearing down to a lower strike. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

w/ this: December 20th, 2008 at 6:31 am

that’s really funny, the thought that I’ve been having, over the last day or so, is: “that this whole ‘ball of wax’ could triple-point at any time..”

much like what lb, above, is alluding to..

So I’m chewing on this a bit and you have Bernanke trying to use liquidity(paper) to move us back to a gas(credit based system) in order to artificially float assets on a lighter than air economy. Meanwhile sublimation is happening and the economy is moving back to a solid, asset backed economy

They are going from a gas to a solid with no liquidity in between. Think about it

I didn’t know that concept was applicable to economics but I think we are seeing it here.