This correspondent had the good fortune to be slithering down ski slopes during the first week of 2000 and missed out on the heavy selling that got the new millennium off to a pretty dismal start.
But he can't help feeling that the slump he missed a couple of weeks ago is only the precursor of more weakness for the Irish stock market and that the Irish Stock Exchange is in serious danger of becoming a sideshow to the events on world markets.
It isn't just that Irish public companies are having problems attracting the interest of international investors.
The heavily peopled stockbroking industry in Ireland may find it increasingly difficult to make a living in a pan-European investment industry where it might make as much sense for an overseas investor to buy the few Irish shares of interest through his local broker in Frankfurt, Paris or wherever.
The challenges facing the Irish stock market were laid out clearly by Dr Peter Bacon in the comprehensive report he published shortly before Christmas. Since then, the stock exchange has gone part of the way towards meeting the Bacon recommendations by its link-up with Deutsche Borse to provide an electronic trading system in Irish equities.
Some commentators have used terms like "stable door" and "bolted" to describe the ISE's belated move towards electronic settlement.
There is certainly a belief in some quarters that the trading in the four most liquid Irish stocks, which has substantially shifted to London and its SETS settlement system, is unlikely to return to Dublin even if it does have an electronic trading system in operation.
The ISE has also promised to introduce measures to make it more attractive for Irish technology companies to list in Dublin, rather than take their business to specialist technology markets such as Nasdaq or the Neuer Markt or London's own fledgling Techmark for technology stocks.
Many involved in the financing of Irish high-tech companies are sceptical about what the ISE can do to make itself attractive to technology companies and believe the most Dublin can expect is that technology companies will show their "Irishness" and fly the flag by having a secondary listing in the market of their country of origin.
Frankly, it is difficult to see what corporate reason led the likes of Elan, Iona, Icon, Trinity Biotech and the soon-to-depart Esat to take a secondary listing in Dublin - other than some patriotic motive.
The level of turnover in these stocks in Dublin has been minuscule, with most trading taking place on Nasdaq - not a surprise given that most of the shares in these companies are held by American investors.
OK, Samir Naji decided to float his company in Dublin and London and foresook the attractions of Nasdaq, but the word from the corporate finance industry is that the expected flow of high-tech IPOs in the next few years will be in the direction of Nasdaq, Neuer Markt and London - with Dublin lucky to get a few crumbs from this table in the form of inconsequential secondary listings.
But even as regards secondary listing, so far there is no sign that Fran Rooney, Cyril McGuire or Bill McCabe see much need to take a secondary listing in Dublin for Baltimore, Trintech or Smartforce. Why should they? The way Irish investors (with some notable exceptions) spurned high-tech shares in the past and starved the industry of investment capital will surely come back to haunt the Irish market.
High-tech companies will take their listing to where the investment interest is - and there is still no sign that Irish institutions have woken up to the fact that the future is in high technology.
And one other problem highlighted by Bacon - and one outside the control of the Irish Stock Exchange - remains unresolved. That is the penal level of stamp duty on dealings in Irish equities. If one buys £10,000,000 (€12,706,480) of BNP shares in Paris, one pays £25,000 to the French taxman. Buy the same amount of Abbey National in London, then pay the Inland Revenue £50,000. And buy £10,000,000 worth of AIB or Bank of Ireland in Dublin, then pay the Revenue Commissioners £100,000.
When a typical investment manager looks at those levels of stamp duty, the incentive to buy an Irish stock in Dublin diminishes. The heads of the Finance Bill published last Friday make no provision for reducing stamp duty on equity trading - not a surprise given that the Minister for Finance made it clear over a month ago that the most he would do as regards stamp duty would be to keep it "under review".
In a pan-European investment environment, peripheral stock markets such as Dublin are going to find it increasingly difficult to survive.
One fervently hopes that the measures proposed by Peter Bacon - if implemented by the ISE - will provide the platform for a vibrant capital markets industry in Dublin. Irish banks have had to deal with sharply reduced earnings on foreign currency dealings after the introduction of the euro.
Is there any obvious reason that Irish stockbrokers - mainly owned by Irish banks - will not face increasingly contracting levels of income as trading moves to the bigger, more liquid international stock markets?
Brendan McGrath can be contacted at bmcgrath@irish-times.ie
