Palo Alto native son James Franco stars in a forthcoming movie, The Interview, which the mentally not-so-stable government of North Korea has already declared as “an act of war.” The plot revolves around two guys who seek to assasinate Kim Jung “Tubby” Un. Here’s the trailer:
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.
Counting Cards
I’ve had quite a few new readers in the last few months and it struck me yesterday from a couple of comments that at least some of these were obviously still hazy on the distinction between technical analysis and fortune telling. It can be an easy mistake to confuse the first with the second, as a good analyst can sometimes make calls that seem almost supernatural. Some of my past calls have been amazingly and rapidly accurate, and some offhand examples I’d pick would be: (more…)
Disrespect for Authority
Regular readers have probably divined that I don’t have mountainous amounts of respect for authority figures. I tend to live on the right side of the law, so civil “servants’ have never done me any good. My relationship with the government consists mainly of giving them taxes in exchange for – – ostensibly – – living in society. (more…)
Cupid and Psycho
I don’t think any post I’ve written caused as big a kerfuffle as A Change In Tone, which was just a 
week ago, in the aftermath of the Yellen bear massacre. So now that so much time has passed, I thought I’d reflect a bit on where things stand and my present disposition.
At the moment, I am:
- Bullish on commodities (examples: DBC, USO)
- Bullish on precious metals (examples: GDX, GLD, SLV, GDXJ)
- Bearish (yeah, still………) on most stocks
- Cautiously bullish on a handful of carefully-selected stocks (example: WPZ)
It continues to be maddening – – absolutely maddening – – that honest-to-God bad economic keeps rolling in, yet the market keeps shrugging and marching higher (freakishly, yesterday’s welcome drop was pretty much out of nowhere and for no particular reason).
I will say, however, that taking a more balanced approach to the various choices in front of me has left me a lot less anxious, less dogmatic, and less hung up on seeing Janet dangling from a branch somewhere. Don’t get me wrong – – I’m still leaning heavily toward equities taking a meaningful hit (although a true bear market is, sadly, probably going to take much longer than we think to really take hold) but there are indeed some markets in which I can be enthusiastically long.
