We’re all feeling it as the stock market continues from one insufferably boring day to the next: Something big is about to happen.  But it can take far longer than any of us might care to imagine.  I can recall sitting on the risers of the PSE trading floor for weeks stretching into months, doing crossword puzzles in-between rare visits from the thieving brokers who worked for Bear Stearns, J.P. Morgan, Goldman et al. They bore mostly what we called ‘pick-off paper’ — orders from customers that the firms themselves invariably front-ran.  You might have thought they were as harmless as belled cats, since we were onto their game. But so juicy did the prices they were willing to pay seem that we invariably traded with the dirtbags anyway, knowing full well that the underlying stock would soon print at some absurd price miles from the quoted market. And it often did, even before we’d finished handing the dirtbags our trade tickets.