Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Money Flow for September Week One

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Further to my last weekly market update, this week's update will look at
graphs and charts for:

  • + 6 Major U.S. Indices
  • + 9 Major U.S. Sectors
  • + Germany, France, and the PIIGS Countries
  • + Emerging Markets Sector (EEM) and the BRIC Countries
  • + Canadian, Japanese, and the World Indices
  • + Commodities
  • + 7 Major Currencies
  • + 30-Year Bonds
  • + SPX:VIX and RUT:RVX Ratio Pairs

Very simply, you
can see from the following series of graphs depicting percentage
gained/lost for the past week
, and the corresponding 1-Year
Daily chartgrids
, that they all ended the week higher, with the
exception of Japan's Nikkei Index, the Agriculture ETF (DBA), the U.S. $, and
30-Year Bonds.


(more…)

Elections – Bankers – and Quantum Mechanics (by Mark St.Cyr)

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Currently I find myself in a quandary on politics and finance. I
can’t help but feel I’m in some alternate universe or reality that only
masters of science fiction like Phillip K. Dick or Arthur C. Clarke
could envision.

It would seem we went to sleep in a world where A was followed by B.
Then woke to find there’s really never been any alphabet at all.  Words
now conform to models of quantum mechanics. They live in two realities.
Just depends who does the viewing determines their reality.

As of today we have two people running for the highest office in the
land. Both are telling everyone we need him to save us. One is an
experienced businessman who’s never had experience as President and
wants you to vote for him because in order to get business moving – you
need to get political leaders working together.

Then we have another who has no experience as a businessman yet has
experience as President who wants you to vote for him because he says to
get political leaders moving – you have to get business leaders working
together.

Both can point to different realities as proof they’re thinking is
correct. It’s near maddening because if reality is purely observational.
Then both can point where they want you to look as proof. In quantum
theory both realities exist at the same time.

On the other hand everyone from the media to the ninety-nine
per-centers look upon the Bankers as pseudo political leaders with vile,
distrust and hatred. Yet, aren’t they exactly the ones who saved their
401ks?

Complaints about 401′s becoming 201′s and 101′s are now a thing of
the past. We are now at levels as if the financial collapse of markets
never took place. If you didn’t live through it to observe it, then
looking at the markets today are just as if it never happened is it not?
Quantum theory at play.

The universe where jobless numbers, business closings, housing
foreclosures are now numbers or information of economic theories long
since dispatched to the black hole of by gone economic theories. They
seemingly no longer exist. That’s the prism of reality to now view the
world.

If politicians were the ones to fix world economies. Then why isn’t
the world clamoring to hear and decipher their every word? Nobody seems
to really care any longer. Yet let it be leaked that a Central Banker
needs to take a leak, and the world pauses to hear the zipper.

The media tells us today it’s the politicians who’ll save things. Yet
haven’t they been inept at best? If it’s results that mean anything,
whom is it the media keeps telling us saved the markets of the world?
That’s right – The Central Bankers.

Place ten thousand of the worlds most famous speeches ever composed
within the Hadron Collider and it would show results as if not a word
were spoken. Yet, just the sheer mention that a vowel is to be mouthed
by Bernanke or Draghi or something more, and it’s as if the worlds
collided.

This is the new reality I’m afraid. And it’s not inside some billion
dollar particle accelerator. We are living it. Let the rules of monetary
policy or velocity be damned! This is the 21st century!

The unemployment rate has fallen once again and threatens to
possibility have a 7 handle by the election based on more people losing
work and not looking. Only quantum theory explains this in my mind.

Modern economist such as Milton Friedman and others whose work and
research on sound money policy is required reading to anyone taking
markets seriously. But now in this quantum world their views are no
longer looked upon. Which is nearly the same as if they never existed in
today’s reality.

This sounds like an experiment waiting to go bad by my way of
thinking. But this is quantum theory so I guess it can – or did – or
whatever. Lord knows I’m no rocket scientist -  just a thinker who
stayed at a Holiday Inn® once.

Anyone with a logical grasp of monetary policies and its effects will
tell you money printing will cause inflation and devalue the printers
currency. Yet today the more the U.S. Federal Reserve prints – the lower
interest rates fall.

Monetizing a nations debt is a fool’s errand. Yet we are now doing it
at such a pace we could make a particle accelerator blush. While at the
same time the U.S. dollar remains relatively strong as compared to the
amount of printing. Breath taking or surreal to say the least.

If you think the above is mind bending. Just try to view Europe through the same prism and its more quantum theory in action.

The European Central Bank just announced it will do similar bond
buying programs yet what happens to their currency? Their currency
rises! Why? Because I guess the view of reality is more in line with
you’re now saving the currency not devaluing it. Reality is all in how
it’s viewed.

Politicians jawboning on doing this or that – meaningless. Draghi
from the ECB (European Central Bank) whispers that bulge just might be a
bazooka and stand back because the view in this prism is going to get
the full Monty!

European markets rally not 1, not 2, but 3 to even 4 percent! Once
again on pure speculation. Talk about power. Who wants to be a
politician when you can have that kind of cause and effect on the wealth
of nations. Impressive one must say regardless of the viewing station
indeed.

However there is one troubling aspect to this theory that I believe
the minds of Leonard Susskind or others would take up slide rules and
commence swatting holes in all this new reality thinking.

I believe all this pseudo monetary reality will come to a rather
unpleasant end. That end I’m afraid will be born out when all these
‘geniuses’ realize their experiments were not just subject to the
reality of their views. But still conformed to the realities of what we
call the “real world.” Never vanishing down some black hole to be lost
as they try to argue.

But we’ll have to wait until others can be convinced to even look
never mind see. Because currently today’s reality is what it is. However
once the assumed models are proven to be illusions. The reality of what
is real can return with frightening speed and repercussions.

We’ll just have to wait and see because that’s reality today.

© 2012 Mark St.Cyr   www.MarkStCyr.com