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.

Over-Exposed

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I think I've gotten more guff about shorting low-priced stocks, like Eastman-Kodak, than I get about shorting just about anything else. I guess the "logic" is that if a stock is close to $0, it can only go up (sort of like if a stock is way above $0, like Priceline, it should come down…………doesn't really work, does it?)

Anyway, Eastman Kodak was my best-performing short in percentage terms on Wednesday. Maybe part of the reason is concern that its pension liability is three times its market capitalization (!) In any event, this one is a keeper for me.

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Precious Metals Rocket Ship

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Gary Savage is one of my favorite bloggers on the web, and he's been a raving, jumping-up-and-down bull on precious metals for as long as I can remember. He also happens to have been very right.

The move higher by gold and – – far more dramatically – silver – has been breathtaking. ProphetCharts has data back for many decades on commodities, and below I've chained together the futures contracts for gold and silver to give you an idea as to the nominal cost per ounce of these two more-precious-than-ever metals.

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Congratulations to those who have ridden this rocket ship. As Gary has often said, this is the one solid bull market out there, and it's made PM bulls plenty of cash – for some, in the hundreds of percentage points. The flip side of this, of course, is that soaring precious metals aren't exactly harbingers of wonderful economic times ahead. Perhaps you'll recall what the late 1970s/early 1980s were like, the last time this kind of mega-bull market in metals happened.

As for equities, I have little other commentary to add. In spite of today's (disappointing) reversal higher, the indexes are still below my lines in the sand, so I remain short, albeit only about 55% committed. With all the problems in the world today, the market is doing a remarkably good job climbing the proverbial wall of worry. That's it for me today. Good night.

A Question on CitiCorp

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I have a question I'd like to ask Slopers: is the purported market capitalization of CitiCorp correct?

If you look at the Yahoo Finance site, it states that their market cap is about $127 billion. Since their stock is about $4.38, and the price of C in late 2006 was $51.54, that would imply their market cap was $1.5 trillion back then.

Since this simply cannot be the case, what's going on with these figures? I never trade C, but I am merely curious.

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