Wednesday, December 31, 2008

New Year 2009

NCS wishes all of our visitors a Happy New Year. We'll be closed for business tomorrow but we'll return to normal operations on Friday. Please note that UPS is on an abbreviated pickup and delivery schedule today - Ground packages won't be delivered or picked up but will resume on Jan 2.

Looking back at 2008, it wasn't too bad a year for the company despite the global slowdown but some things stood out as follows:

1) ThePlanet data center explosion in early June which knocked our main shop offline along with numerous other sites for about 4 days.
2) The Japanese yen rallied like gangbusters against the U.S. dollar but it's probably not done yet... unless the BOJ intervenes like it did in the previous decade. The yen rose 19% against the dollar in 2008.
3) We bet correctly on the direction of a few bubble markets including oil. One clue was Goldman pumping calling for $200/bbl. Another was contango during the summer months. Yet another was retail piling into the crude trade. Three strikes. There's nothing but blue skies at the top and glaring "certainty" that TEOTWAWKI is nigh at the bottom. For 2009, gold looks toppy - similar signals that clued us to crude's demise are present.

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