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.

Revisiting the Gold Bugs

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Wednesday seemed dead-quiet compared to the excitement of Tuesday, so this evening I had to ponder a bit what to discuss. I decided the most interesting thing happening was with the gold bugs index (which, by way of symbol GDX, I trade actively).

Below is the broad view of index symbol $HUI, which shows how the analog has strengthened recently. The key, of course, is to break beneath that lower horizontal line. If we can do that, life gets interesting in a big hurry.

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Looking closer, you can see the important event that happened on Monday: we broke that ascending trendline. On Tuesday, we gapped down, creating a nice window at 508.92

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Looking closer still, you can see how much damage has been done since February 29th. We came dangerously close to crossing above 554.92, but mercifully we did not. The gold bugs index may seem odd and esoteric, but I am firmly confident that a failure of this index would be a crucial harbinger of a general plunge in equities.

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As a final thought, here is the price chart………without the prices. This just shows a standard trio of simple moving averages and points out where I believe we are relative to the prior analogous timeframe.

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So that's it from me tonight. I'll see you Thursday morning, and of course we can all anticipate the big jobs report Friday morning with bated bear breath.

Consumer Credit Levels Higher Than in 2007/08

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Consumer Credit Data released on Wednesday shows, firstly, a correction in the prior month's release data down to 16.3B from 19.3B, and, secondly, a rise in the latest month's data to 17.8B, as shown on the graph below (note that the graph does not show the prior month's data correctly yet).

The levels of consumer debt accumulated during the past three months are higher than they were in 2007/08 just prior to the financial crisis…in fact, they're at their highest levels seen since January 2000…an interesting scenario considering that Personal Income has declined, as mentioned in my post of March 1st.

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Two Cartoons & Some Words to Boot!

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NFTRH gives few easy answers.  That is because its writer has no easy answers, although there are consistent road maps we have used for years now that have never failed to help preserve capital when necessary – which is often – and make outstanding capital gains, when appropriate.

These road maps take the form of outliers (to standard technical and fundamental analysis) like the decades long 'Continuum' in US Treasury bonds, which takes on particular significance at limiting boundaries like the upper monthly EMA 100 (red arrows), as inflation expectations get too hot.  These have consistently proven to be times when inflation cultists, guru followers and momentum chasers have gotten croaked in the markets at very important turns as the Continuum pings along over the years from inflationary to deflationary (green arrows) fears.

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