IT'S difficult to be too positive about the local stock market's prospects in the week ahead, at least going by its behaviour and performance over the past six months or so. The absence of retail participation and volume has been widely discussed many times over - last week's The Business Times letters page featured some of the more salient points in the debate - but suffice it to say that a quick return to the days when daily turnover regularly crossed S$2 billion is not likely, at least not in the next few weeks as markets wind down for the year.

Furthermore, the Hong Kong-Shanghai connect kicks off on Monday and traders here will be watching with no small amount of envy and with some concern to see if the already low attention devoted to the local stock market will be diverted there.

Ironically, perhaps the biggest factor in favour of HK-Shanghai having no discernible impact on local stocks is that interest levels here are now low, and the local market has not been prominent on the radar of international money for many months now. As one dealer said when asked whether money could flow from here to Hong Kong: "Unlikely, because we are trapped in a vortex of our own, a dimension that is unaffected by outside forces."