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.

Regarding Gold

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If you are not a casino patron and if you are patient, you will
realize that the disconnect of gold from the ‘risk on’ trade currently
taking a manic and global center stage is a good thing.

gold bar

Gold, a big hunk of value storage in a monetary world gone off the
charts, just sits there, waiting out the ridiculous lurches by casino
patrons over the years.

Summer of 2011, casino patrons jerk to the right (momo'ing a store of value).  Winter of 2013, casino patrons jerk to the left (momo'ing risk).

Do you see the humor and the tragedy in all of this?

http://www.biiwii.com

Good Grief

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Yesterday I drove the family up to Santa Rosa for a fencing tournament, and since it was going to be a long day, I decided to take my daughter ice skating and to the nearby Charles Schulz museum (I took a couple of photos, shown below). I had been there years before, and I really enjoyed it, but she had never been.

0128-peanutsComics have always been a big part of my life, and I've got many thick volumes of comics that I enjoy. They tend to be more out of the ordinary stuff, such as Zippy and This Modern World, but I've also got my fair share of Dilberts and the like. I've never had any Peanuts, pretty much because they're all stored in my head anyway and I don't need a book.

Indeed, comics are such a big share of my cultural touchpoints that, before Slope, I was seriously going to focus my blog on bitching about comics. I was going to call it The Comics Curmudgeon, and I already had my sights set on inexcusable crap like Garfield, Cathy, and Family Circus. Of course, that blog would have starved itself of material pretty fast, so I never really bothered. The world will never know of Barfy's Theorem and other pontifications I planned.

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The Orchard Ahead

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I'm as tired of talking about Apple as I imagine you are hearing about it, but still – – – – after my insane $440 target was nailed (which garnered press coverage around the world; errr, actually, no; no one cares about such things; they only care about long-haired $1,000/share projections) I'm going to go out on a limb AGAIN and lay out Apple's path. We're heading to the lower 300s.

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I’m With Ackman

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I listened, as I'm sure many of you did, to the childish bitch-slap between Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn last week). I had never listened to either of the men before in my life, but after the slugfest, I felt that Ackman came off as relatively erudite, intelligent, and well-spoken, whereas Icahn came off as a petulant brat (I've seen other polls on this weighty topic, and, strangely, Icahn comes out on top).

In any event, I've kept no secret of my belief that HerbaLife (HLF) is going to plunge, and I've got the puts in my account to back my belief. Listening to the verbal sparring only deepened my conviction. The shorts are the underdog here, and they are threatened from all sides with a squeeze. Bite me.

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