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This year probably won't go down as a vintage one for exchanges and the market infrastructure industry. But listen! You can just about hear the sound of modestly sized tectonic plates shifting deep beneath the surface.
Strengthening ties between the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges must be watched, but a live link alone won't cause a revolution, though accompanying reforms in tax and other areas could amplify the importance of this move.
While most exchange experts agree this link is part of a long march rather than overnight global dominance, it nevertheless has the feel of something important played out over time. Even now, China is slotting into place yuan trading arrangements in Europe ahead of the day in a few years' time when it will probably be the world's biggest economy.
"There will be quite a few hiccups along the way with the Hong Kong and Shanghai tie up. As much as people want to get in there, most of the big global investment banks won't until issues such as capital gains tax are resolved," said Niki Beattie of the Market Structure Partners.
In Europe, the unbundling of Euronext stock exchange from the mothership ICE is also noteworthy as the satellite equities unit starts again from a very small base, said Brian Taylor of BTA Consulting.
To borrow a Chinese proverb, protectionist European policymakers should be careful what they wish for now that Europeans control Euronext once again. Will it all be a Pyrrhic victory for Paris?
Over on the other side of the English Channel some see a landmark development that the rest of the sector should learn from.
"I think the London Stock Exchange deal with Russell indexes has reshaped the way exchanges think; that they don't all need to do deals with each other but look further afield," said Beattie, who is also non-executive chairman of challenger platform Aquis Exchange.
Such corporate moves at exchanges like the LSE, Euronext and Hong Kong, while important in their own way, may not end up setting the fundamental direction for 2015. Analysts believe that the key shaper of events next year will likely be far more prosaic, in particular new regulation kicking in.
"Obviously the big shift next year will be the move in terms of regulation to all asset classes like commodities and bonds after seeing a tacit reluctance ahead of MiFID II to accept that the status quo is changing," said Rebecca Healey, senior analyst at the TABB Group.
And scandals such as banks being fined for trying to rig the foreign exchange market will also fuel more new rules, such as a rapid shift to electronic trading in FX, which regulators are calling for.
Underpinning all this will be buy side's desire to have far more control over costs and what happens to their order flow as they come under regulatory pressure to justify the fees they charge investors and clients, Healey said.
"The whole trading process is shifting the balance between buy and sell side, and as you get those tectonic shifts, you get the emergence of new market participants," Healey added.
The little-loved back office will also become more important, as regulators insist on recording and reporting all transactions, helping to boost electronic trading, with both developments reshaping the front office, Healey said.
While exchanges will be in a strong position to exploit new rules favouring electronic trading and transparency, the winners among the exchanges will be those that can also manage a customer's collateral as new trading, clearing and reporting rules in derivatives bite, Beattie predicts.
"It's going to be harder for people to win new business away from exchanges where someone is managing your collateral well. We will see centralisation in collateral management, but not everybody is going to be a winner," Beattie said.
And next year Europe will get a better idea of the sweeping changes the European Union is hoping to engineer under the banner of a capital markets union.
So far, CMU is has just been a catchphrase for a vague concept that includes making junior stock markets more attractive for SMEs to list: a bid to create an equity culture in Europe to fund economic growth and rival the United States.
Will CMU end up as a supervisory turf war between EU agencies and national regulators?
It could be years before Europe's market infrastructure sector sees trading volumes form CMU reforms boosted sufficiently to lift an industry from the doldrums of a flagging euro zone economy.
