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.

Losing Graciously

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There's a very well-known publisher of market commentary which – like me – has been largely bearish over the past two and a half years. What is irksome to me is that, in the face of a market which has done little but push higher all this time, they keep pointing to a chart showing that in "real dollars" (in their view, gold) the market has indeed been crashing.

Ummm, that's stupid. Gold is an asset, but it isn't used as money in our society. Do you buy groceries with it? Pay your mortgage with it? Pay school tuition with it? I didn't think so.

I could make ANY prediction about ANY market and be correct if you allowed me to choose some kind of "currency" as a benchmark. Over any span of time, you can find something which has gone either up or down in value to support your claim, if that's what you're allowed to use as your divisor.

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{Number} {Noun} to {Verb} Your {Noun}

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I read a lot of stuff online, and it's become quite obvious to me that I'm missing the boat. After all, I don't make use of the "hooks" that other bloggers do when titling their posts. I offer a sampling from Altucher, whose work I enjoy from time to time:

0217-numbers

The "number" thing is used to death, but I confess, it works. I'm not sure what it is about the human mind that latches on to such titles, but I suppose the prospect of having a discrete number of bite-sized morsels to read is more appealing than a broadly-titled mystery like my own Good and Evil.

But my pledge to you remains: I'm not going to use this device. If you read my stuff, it won't because I've seduced you with "3 Ways Bernanke Has Ruined My Life" or "10 Objects I Insert Into My Blankfein Voodoo Doll." I'm just going to have to let my writing stand on its own.

Now all I've got to do is write something……….

Let Paper Be Our Fuel – Gasoline Update (by Goatmug)

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AMPLE PAPER FOR EVERYONE!

The seasonal gasoline trade has been my target for the last two years and so far they have been quite profitable.  I've highlighted trades in WNR, VLO, and UGA and all have done well.  As I have laid out previously there is a seasonal component to this trade, but it is also one based on the view that Benny has our back and he and his central banker pals are finding ways to goose the global financial system through their respective liquidity providing measures.  (Explicit or not).  As they go to work making sure that no civilization is ever short on paper or electronic currency, this forces things with real tangible value like commodities to move higher.

THE GLOBAL FEDOLUTION

Last year around the time the Tunisian riots began to break out I suggested that our Fed could be directly and indirectly to blame because global food prices were sky-rocketing and starving people have little choice but to rise up and take action.  I coined the phrase the Fedolution as we can give the credit or rest the blame for the Arab Spring's spark largely with the Federal Reserve.

As we fast forward, incarnations of Fed action have resulted in a continued liquidity driven asset frenzy that has spilled into other commodities.   Since early 2011 we seen hard asset prices bounce around, but thanks to a significant rebound in December 2011 and January 2012 we see that almost all commodities move higher significantly.  Our economic measures suggest that price inflation is really almost non-existent according to the Fed's definition, but somehow we find that domestic gasoline prices are at the highest level for a January ever.

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