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.

Downside Risk for Commodities

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This is going to be quick, because I have camp-ish things to do (archery among them!) but I wanted to throw out some bear porn as to potential medium-term direction of the charts below. The sad fact of the matter is that if I had simply put on my short positions in early April and spent the next three months yodeling on a rooftop, my profits would be substantially higher than they are now. Such is the case of a downtrend.

Tomorrow's a big day, with another stupid summit kicking off as well as the Supreme Court decision on healthcare. Strap in.

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Rise, Platform, Blow Off, Correction: AU is Well

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Many chart geeks – myself included – are managing the 1520 to 1530 area as important support for gold, which it is if the 'price' of gold is what matters.  And with legions of individuals and funds holding GLD or other forms of paper gold, I suppose it is important.  They are hoping for their paper to be marked up after all, with the idea of making 'price' gains in line with the value associated at any given time with the actual monetary metal.

In addition to visual support levels, there are trend lines and moving averages in play as well and this chart has nothing to do with any of these.  In fact, it has not so much to do with technical analysis as it has to do with perspective; a sort of cartoon version of the last several years of agony and ecstasy that has been the gold bug experience.

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Schrodinger’s Cat (by Springheel Jack)

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One of my favorite scientific ideas is the Schrodinger's Cat theoretical experiment. This is an illustration of Erwin Schrodinger's 1935 proposition of the quantum (physics) theory of superposition. The way it works is that a living cat is placed into a closed steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of a radioactive substance. If the radioactive substance decays during the test period, then a relay mechanism will trigger the device and kill the cat. 

The observer cannot know whether this has happened, and whether the cat is dead or alive, until the container is opened. Since the fate of the cat is unknown, in quantum terms, the cat is neither dead nor alive, and is instead in a superposition of states, or alternatively a cloud of relative probabilities, until the box is opened, and the condition of the cat is observed, crystallizing one outcome or the other. Obviously the experiment sounds pretty tough on the cat, but it's well demonstrated that while things appear to work in a much more deterministic way in the world we see around us, this quantum uncertainty is the way a quantum particle behaves.

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