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.

The Cynical Seven

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When the markets are going up day after day, week after week, and month after month, I get especially contemplative. I probably think way too much for my own good anyway, but it’s “worse” when the markets are doing nothing but making daily new highs.

I think it’s fairly common for folks to think about the fantasy of leaping back to their younger selves and giving them some kind of advice or counsel which would serve them well. I’m not talking about something silly and specific like “Buy Bitcoin in 2010 and never, ever sell it” but something more general. This may come off as super-cynical, but it isn’t really meant to be. These are honestly the must-have tips I would offer my younger self for persistent success in the post-1987 U.S. equity market:

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Peering Through the Kaleidoscope

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I would like to start out with a snippet from the 1993 film Schindler’s List.

We were on the roof on Monday, young Lisiek and I and we saw the Herr Commandant come out of the front door and down the steps by the patio right there below us and there on the steps he drew his gun and he shot a woman who was passing by. A woman with a bundle, through the throat, just shot her. Just a woman on her way somewhere, you know, she was no fatter or thinner or slower or faster than anyone else and I couldn't guess what she had done. The more you see of the Herr Commandant, the more you see there are no set rules that you can live by. You can't say to yourself, "If I follow these rules, I will be safe."

For me, nothing captures my feelings toward the stock market better than the above quote. The stock market, in the form of Herr Commandant, has power. It can do things at will. It has its own behavior. But that behavior is no longer something that can be understood. It simply does what it does, without any clear basis in rational thought, and we can either participate as willing collaborators, rationality be damned, or we can stand back in abject puzzlement and horror. I’m kind of in the horror camp.

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