A few decades ago, we grudgingly accepted the fact that Wall Street, to those who play the stock market, is the CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE.

But now it looks like the bullies on Wall Street are about to push us westerners too far (i.e. over the edge) by doing the unthinkable.

Unless you've been dead or so sleep-deprived that you're wondering why the page goes blank when you type NYSE:ENE for an Enron quote, you will have heard that the New York Stock Exchange, the Mother of All Stock Exchanges, is considering extending the trading day by as much as two hours and threatening to tack the extra time on in the wee hours of the morning.

Since Wall Street is the CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE, relative to Cow Street in Calgary, Howe Street in Vancouver and Wikiwikiwikiwiki Street in Hawaii, the deep thinkers at the NYSE seem to have forgotten one teensy-weensy detail in considering extended trading as a strategy in beefing up revenues.

People who trade the stock market need to sleep occasionally and some of us actually live in time zones other than Eastern Standard Time, the time zone in the CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE.

More importantly, if you sleep through your alarm and miss the first hour of trading, you're out of the game. You've bypassed what professional day trader Tyler Bollhorn refers to as "Amateur Hour."

This is the 60 minutes when schizophrenic stocks make up their minds how they're going to misbehave - and, unfortunately, the time when bright-eyed eastern traders and market-makers take the bleary-eyed, brain-fogged, coffee-stained western traders to the cleaners.

After the news recently that NYSE management was mulling over a longer trading day, which would likely mean that other North American exchanges, including the TSX, would follow suit, CNBC interviewed a professional trader in California.

Big mistake. The trader dozed off before the interviewer could pop the first question.

Do you think this red-eyed California trader, who now gets up in the middle of the night to warm up for a 6:30 a.m. opening bell, would be pleased to have his trading day start two hours earlier, or about the time when Californians get last call?

Do you think Hawaiians would be thrilled to learn that their trading day will begin at 2:30 a.m.?

Personally, even after seven cups of coffee and three stacks of coffee pancakes with coffee syrup, I require GPS technology to locate the keyboard and sometimes still can't remember my password for signing on to E*Trade at 6:30 a.m., an hour before the opening bell in Calgary.

But do you think that NYSE chief executive John Thain and NYSE management, bent on catering to European traders, could care less about what we westerners think?

Of course not.

Forget those other issues such as market timing, pom-pom research reports and screwy financial reports. The prospect of earlier trading hours and a longer trading day deserves nothing less than a thorough Eliot Spitzer investigation.

I think it's a lock that the NYSE will eventually institute an extended trading day, which should perk up western sales of Starbucks (SBUC) coffee.

And, if the NYSE revises its trading day, then you can expect other exchanges to follow suit.

So I figure it's high time we bug-eyed, trade-weary westerners finally organized and took a stand against this eastern bias.

To show John Thain we mean business, we could hire ol' "Hard Ball Negotiations" himself, Bobby Goodenow, the head of the NHL Players Association.

With the NHL lockout in an apparent gridlock, Goodenow will have lots of time on his hands and be happy to tell John Thain where to go with this plan to deprive us westerners of sleep.

I see no reason why a union boss who has taken an anti-hockey stance can't become the anti-CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE, even if he is an easterner.

We could provide Goodenow with a list of demands concerning working conditions for stock traders.

If Thain doesn't pay attention, we'll walk. Trading by westerners would grind to a halt.

If big-time players like our ol' pal Larry Ryckman down in Phoenix, or Peter Pocklington in California stop trading, surely they won't even bother to ring the opening bell on the Big Board in New York.

Our demands for a first contract would be as follows:

* The NYSE must open for trading three hours hours later - at 10:30 a.m. in Calgary, 9:30 a.m. in California, 7:30 a.m. in Honolulu, 12:30 p.m. in New York and 2 p.m. in St. John's, Newfoundland - so that westerners could eat a hearty breakfast, get in a game of squash and kick back in the spa before the opening bell.

* The NYSE must cease trading for five minutes every two hours for the all-important bathroom breaks, 30 minutes for an intraday nap, a one-hour sanity break for lunch and another one-hour martini break late in the day for Happy Hour.

* The NYSE must institute a four-day workweek so we could skip the stress of Bad News Fridays and make our analyst appointments (no, not research analysts).

* The NYSE must cease trading on my anniversary, my birthday, Ukrainian Christmas, April Fool's Day, the 13th of each month and during tax-loss selling season.

* The NYSE must halt any stock in my portfolio when it behaves recklessly (i.e. crashes through a key technical support level).

* The NYSE must have a long talk with its 'little sister' exchange, the TSX, over its penchant for preposterous, long-winded ticker symbols such as NON.SE.N.SE.

That should provide a decent basis for opening negotiations.

Have at 'em, Bobby.

Oh, and if by chance the NYSE hires NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and ignores our demands for a life?

Well, we could always move to Newfoundland, eh?

* SAGE WORDS: "It's healthy to get away from the market for a day or two, or even a few weeks, from time to time. The time away will help you regain perspective of what things in life really matter. If you need to trade every day, it may be a sign of an unhealthy addiction."

- Michael Parness, author of Rule The Freakin' Markets.

HOT STOCK: Sterling Resources
TSXV:SLG $1.55
Up 45 cents (+40.1%) on 1.8 million shares (based on weekly results through Feb. 10 .
Starry-eyed speculators have been comparing Sterling to Centurion Energy International (TSX:CUX), the thoroughbred in the stable of international oil and gas plays. Indeed, Sterling’s form chart is looking mighty impressive with the stock up five-fold in the past 12 months on the Calgary company’s prospects in Romania, France and the U.K. Yet, the comparison may be a bit of a stretch as Centurion has been trading in the $15 range for a stunning two-year return of about 2,900 per cent.

COLD STOCK: Heritage Oil & Gas
TSX:HOC $7.21
Down $1.74 (-19.4%) on 256,600 shares (based on weekly results through Feb. 10.
If you’re playing these international oil and gas companies, you’d better have a cast-iron stomach or perhaps a stop-loss order in place to guard against massive selloffs triggered by exploration misses. Heritage, whose stock has tripled in the past year, was pounded on disappointing results from production testing
of a well in Uganda. The Calgary company said the well is not believed to be commercially viable.

(Gyle Konotopetz can be reached at gyle@businessedge.ca)