Hundreds of men in starched robes descend on an opulent hotel here to vie for the most distinguished digits. Earlier this year, Abu Dhabi businessman Saeed Khouri made headlines and the Guinness Book of World Records when he paid $14 million for the tag simply sporting a “1.” His cousin, stockbroker Talal Khouri, paid $9 million for “5” — the second-largest sum ever paid for a license plate.
– From the July 1, 2008 Wall Street Journal titled: Read My License Plate: It Cost Me a Fortune
I vividly remember reading the above article in the Wall Street Journal over six years ago and shaking my head in disbelief. Although the U.S. equity market had already peaked in October of 2007, in early July 2008 the oil market was hitting new record highs almost every single day. I remember going on an endless stream of client visits with my former employer, partly due to the novelty of me being one of the few sell-side guys out there yelling that we were in the midst of a massive commodity bubble. Within days of that WSJ Journal article, the oil bubble popped and the price crashed from a high of $147 per barrel to $32 by December, or a nearly 80% plunge in five months.
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