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.

Did Apple Just Become Microsoft?

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Let me get this out of the way up front. I have been an Apple® fan from the beginning. I’ve owned their products with my first purchase of a IIc back in the early 80′s. Yes, I have bounced back and forth between PC based brands over the years, but once the revolution at Apple took place with the return of Jobs (where truly everything changed) I began dropping anything PC based and replaced it with Apple.

Since the introduction of the iPhone®, and the improvements via iOS and Mac® based platforms I made the change to everything Apple based and haven’t looked back. I have opined many times that all one has to do to solidify whether or not the switch was worth it was to try to make the change back. For me, 10 minutes trying to do simple things without feeling I need a degree in code writing was all it took. (I know there’s a whole anti-Apple crowd so save the emails) (more…)

ZIRP Era in Pictures

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Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) was instigated by a credit induced collapse of the US financial system and perpetuated in December of 2008 by desperate financial policy makers as a fix to problems they created in the first place.

In reality, it is simply an epic distortion of normal economic signals that cleaned up the mess created by previous policy distortions (like the commercial credit bubble of the Greenspan era) by systematically (5+ years and running) main lining new distortions into the system.

zirp (more…)

Russian vs German Indices

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The following 3-year Daily Ratio chart of the Russian Index vs. the German Index shows a very recent bounce in favour of Russia, following a 3 year relative decline in Russia’s strength in the markets. All three technical indicators have now been pulled into positive territory (above their mid-points), and price has bounced above the declining 50 day moving average. Major resistance sits around the declining 200 day moving average.

I’d watch to see if these levels are held in the days/weeks ahead as a possible gauge of any easing of tensions between these two countries and softening of sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine situation…resulting in a strengthening of the Russian markets. Otherwise, a drop and hold below the March lows could spell bigger political unrest and trouble ahead. (more…)