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.

Robbins’ Egg

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About a week ago, I mentioned in the comments section that a new documentary appeared on Netflix called I Am Not Your Guru, which is about Tony Robbins. Now, I’m familiar with who Tony Robbins is, because it’s pretty hard not to be if you live in the U.S. At first, I thought it would be some kind of tell-all take-down of the man, but it turns out it’s pretty much a two hour commercial for the guy (he did, after all, have total approval over its content).

I found it terribly interesting to watch, however. I tend to view the whole New Age-y, Self-Help-y, Personal Empowerment industry to be pretty vile. It strikes me as shallow, shamelessly opportunistic, and it tries to cloth itself in some kind of spirituality when, in fact, it’s 99% about making a buck. This clown on YouTube captures it nicely (and this isn’t a parody; he’s for real):


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Banging the Yen

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The USD/JPY has been an important source of strength of US equities lately. The green tint I’ve placed below is pretty much where things should exhaust themselves vis a vis the Fibonacci retracement levels. If we just slip past this level with strength, we could simply be in a new, higher range for the yen, making it all the easier for stocks to keep making daily lifetime highs (I stand in awe that the Dow 30 appears to be poised to make its ninth daily gain in a row).

 

0720-yen

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Not-So-Good As Gold

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Those of you who watch my little Tastytrade show might remember that yesterday I turned sour on precious metals miners. I bought a position in DUST and also shorted a couple of specific miners (AG, NEM)

Philosophically, I’m a big fan of precious metals thriving in the years ahead as a declaration of the ultimate failure of central bankers. From a charting perspective, though, miners have been oh-my-Lord-overbought for weeks now, and it seemed it was time for a breather. (What really sold me was the collapsing volume in DUST, suggesting people had just stopped bothering anymore). In any event, it looks like this sector is in for some backing-and-filling. Gold’s first important test of support is coming up, tinted in green:

0720-gc