We have a few delistings and halts going on today. First, despite the bad news for HD-DVD that surfaced last week, there were more titles available on HD-DVD than Blu-Ray at the year's end. And so our HDVSBLU prop pays out at $100. The market missed out on this one: trading was halted at $47.25 per share.

Excuse the interruption of CES coverage, but we've at long last closed the GOOGL proposition. As traders can see from the chart above, Yahoo.com's

PPX traders, hope everyone had a great holiday! We're happy to announce the payouts of the following stocks that coincided with the end of 2007:

Despite the high cost of powering cargo freighters, it doesn't look like viable alternatives are appearing anytime soon. Instead, the enormous ships  are increasingly turning to innovative ways of lessening fuel consumption. One promising possibility is massive sails—kites really—that can be retrofitted onto ships and aid in propelling them across the ocean. Earlier this month, Beluga Shipping christened its  MV "Beluga SkySails"—a cargo ship with a 520 square foot propulsion kite; the first to utilize the system. A transoceanic voyage  is imminent, but  unfortunately for PPX buyers, the  date has been pushed from mid-December to January.  Most traders guessed correctly, however: The SKYSAIL stock (Will the sail-assisted Beluga freighter depart by December 20, 2007?) was halted at $35.75 and closed at $0.—Abby Seiff

FYI, traders: This Sunday, maintenance on the PPX servers will take place from 6pm to Midnight (EST). The work may cause delays and momentary outages during that timeframe.

Yesterday NASA announced that it will delay launching the shuttle Atlantis until at least January 2nd. Atlantis was supposed to take off on Thursday, but one of its four fuel sensors started malfunctioning prior to the flight.

For now engineers are going to try to fix the problem while the shuttle in on the pad, but if they can't figure out the error that way, they'll have to move Atlantis to the hangar, which would cause further delays.

The good news, though, is that the agency says there's still enough of a time cushion to keep its February launch, which includes parts of the Japanese Kibo module, on track.

For our PPX crowd, this news does indeed spell a halt on our SHUTL proposition. Payout will happen January 1st, but it's clear NASA's plan for four flights to the ISS this year was just slightly too ambitious.—Gregory Mone

As recently as September, Apple was playing coy when it came to a rumored 3G iPhone. At a news conference that month Steve Jobs told reporters a phone wouldn't appear before they can "see the battery lives for 3G get back up into
the five-plus-hour range." Nevertheless, its carrier seems to have less compulsion to hold back. Yesterday, AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson all but announced an impending 3G iPhone, responding to a reporter's question about the possibility with: "You'll have it next year." Apple declined to comment, but presumably isn't thrilled about the slip—especially when it comes on the tails of the holiday wish-list deluge.

Meanwhile, on PPX the news incited a flurry of trading on our 3G iPhone proposition. But until Apple proffers an announcement of its own, the stock's up for grabs.—Abby Seiff

Via: Bloomberg.com

Let the rumor mill churn away, but good luck getting something out of it. After more than a year of speculation, iTunes and the Beatles still haven't announced a deal to release the notoriously-absent tracks. BEATUNES, which would pay out in full if Beatles songs appeared on iTunes by Halloween, kept brokers guessing in the first month, but fell steadily over the past few weeks. Today, the stock closes at $0, with trading halted at a scant $1.50 per share. Why do you taunt us so?!—Abby Seiff

Another day, another failed attempt to forward space technology. Less than a week after the Space Elevator Games concluded without a winner, the X Prize Cup followed suit. The much favored Armadillo Aerospace—the only one of nine entrants ready by the start of the event—dashed hopes when their lander exploded while still on the launch pad. Accordingly, no one walked away with the $350,000 Level 1 purse, leaving our LANDR proposition (trading in the mid-60s at the start of the competition) to close out at $0. Sorry space fans, better luck next time.—Abby Seiff

At long last, the long-delayed A380 has finally made its first commercial flight—over 18 months behind schedule but still early enough to meet the conditions of our PPX proposition. A380FLIES has been delisted and paid out at POP$100 per share.

Personally I was skeptical, but the market was leaning toward success all along, with the proposition trading above $80 for the last few months. It closed at POP$99.75—doesn't get much more certain than that!

Above is a video of the historic touchdown in Sydney, courtesy of the UK's Telegraph. —John Mahoney

Despite high hopes, the NASA-sponsored Space Elevator Games failed to produce viable space elevator technology for the third year in a row. The event concluded this morning with no winners in either the robotic climber or the vertical tether competition, and our SEGWIN stock was delisted. The value of the stock—trading at $30.75 prior to its halt—dropped to $0.

A day after trading was halted, PopSci got official confirmation from NASA that their COTS agreement with Rocketplane Kistler had not yet been terminated and the stock paid out at $0. A tricky prediction to pin down, the market nevertheless guessed correctly: RKPLOVR was trading at $32.75 when halted.—Abby Seiff

Today on PPX we have halted not one, not two, no, not even three, but FOUR propositions—all of them paying out at POP$0. No surprises here—all of the stocks in question had been trading below $10 for several weeks.

In summary, Digg.com was not shut down, no NASA bigwigs were fired, the iPhone was not recalled, and Facebook.com did not go public:

DIGGRIP: halted at POP$0.50

PNKSLP: halted at POP$2.50

FACEBOOK: halted at POP$5.25

IPRECAL: halted at POP$0.25

As always, happy trading! —John Mahoney

Commissions are now live. To recap, from now on PPX will charge a flat POP$0.25 per share on every trade. The charge will be deducted from the users cash balance. Happy trading.—The PPX Staff