Merry Christmas to all Alpha.Sources' Readers (and everybody else)

With the danger of stating the obvious it is quite clear that the posting has been a bit low here at AS this latter part of 2008. This unfortunately will last a little longer although I hope that I will have time to move in on occasion with some observations.

Markets and the economy in general have of course been quite surreal in the past 4 months. From a barrel of oil below USD 40, the mind boggling fraud of Maddof, the absolutely devastating toll on the real economy in some regions over to the recent reversion of USD strength (and the potential return of inflation in market discourse?) we have certainly had our share of key events. And this, of course, does not even reveal the tip of the iceberg.

2009 will clearly and without a doubt be a year where some economies will face the harshest recession in more than half a century. This will create challenges and not least a change in mind set amongst key market participants and institutional regulators and players.

I hope to be able to have much more to say about this in the near future.

For now, the only thing I will do is to wish my readers and their family a Merry Christmas. Be careful of too much duck (turkey, "flæskesteg" or whatever) and go easy on the Christmas sweets.

best wishes

Claus