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.
If one graph captures the multi-year juggernaut of complacency that has swept the market, it is the VXX. With the $VIX cracking into the $11.xx zone earlier today (and, who knows, we might even see single digits this year!) one wonders if peace and contentment will be with us through the year 3157. This is a sight to behold:
For the sixth time – sixth! – in the past couple of months, the Russell 2000 is trying to enter a bull market again. I’ve marked each attempt below, following the lifetime high made on March 4. Lower lows. Lower highs. These ripping rallies are a big pain in the butt. It’s enough to drain one of one’s precious bodily fluids.
In the UK parliament it has been for a very long time been a rule that no MP (Member of Parliament) can call another MP a liar in the Houses of Parliament. Over the years a number of ways round this restriction have been used and my personal favorite is the term ‘terminological inexactitude’ as a euphemism for a lie.
Why does that spring to mind this morning? Well the Western Powers have been trying to be polite and conciliatory towards Russia over the Ukraine, despite Russia’s breaking of their treaty commitments to Ukraine, and thinly masked manoeuvrings to try and seize a large part of the Ukraine for themselves, but that must be strained to breaking point today. (more…)
One can’t help but look at the situations transpiring around the globe and hope: things are different
this time. The problem is being different puts it right back in line with that other caveat: history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And so lies the most troubling aspect facing not only the U.S. economy, but quite possibly the world as whole. For if things rhyme anything inline with past events in history: We’re all in a dung heap of QE based minutia, with Geo-political ramifications the “intellectual” crowd never contemplated as possible – let alone probable.
It was just a mere 4 years ago this month in which then Fed. Chair Ben Bernanke announced to the world via his now infamous Jackson Hole speech that QE would basically be adulterating the financial markets indefinitely. i.e., QE1 became QE2 signaling QE4eva. And since that time the Federal Reserve has done just. And as always that decision was heralded by the financial media as “genius.” (more…)
